Being Arthur Russell

My percept a feeling divides
Like cells divide the eye
And sunset this and clouds that

Point to which drums shoot
The air up shake their fists
In the air some meaning of

Us was in your airs drip
ping down from the present
A series of strings verbs


Spiraling down from which
Identification is not your
Eyes seeing the wind skim

Across what iteration and
Irritants nearly touch
An idea of skin our image-

Forming suffused by music
Imagine a night-light’s
Inner life imagine forgetting


The meaning of all those
Little words like a conse
quence this breath burdened

By a bow and what the voice
Can do articulation folded
The air around in the event

Of this note duree betrayed
My heart of Avenue A in
The rain pigeons seemed to


Circle the sun so this was us
Their wings creased like
Gold leaf on a knife that is

The matting of our days
A way their simultaneity was
Not entirely in synch with

Anything one of them did
Or made social by a sing
ular turn of their wings.

A (Soma)tic Exercise

So rows vanish
Points me wood
Does this circle

End what the
Fuck is going
On these are

Just some notes
Among the muggy
Cars and flag

Torn filters throw
The wreck off
Wherever we go

Statues mark this
Place tho nothing
Happens seasons reverse

On opposite days
I'm not sorry
For being a

Discourse connect the
Lines in gasoline
It is summer

In the snow
A public space
Seems to float

Through me there's
A street above
Those open leaves.

At Long Beach Notebook

I will be reading next week in Long Beach, CA with Rob Halpern and Amanda Ackerman for Jane Sprague's seminal events series, Long Beach Notebook. Here is the ad for the event:

Dear Friends,

Please join us next Saturday, July 12 2008 in Long Beach, California to hear the work of Amanda Ackerman, Thom Donovan and Rob Halpern.

Long Beach Notebook begins at 8:00 pm. The event takes place at the home office of Palm Press: 143 Ravenna Drive, Long Beach, CA 90803 (use Mapquest or Google Maps for directions).

***
Amanda Ackerman lives in Los Angeles where she writes and teaches. She is co-editor of the press eohippus labs. She is a member of UNFO (The Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization) and writes as part of Sam or Samantha Yams. She is also a member of the event space Betalevel. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in flim forum; String of Small Machines; The Physical Poets; WOMB; and the Encyclopedia Project, Volume F-K. With Harold Abramowitz, she is also co-author of the book Sin is to Celebration, soon to be published by House Press in the fall.

Thom Donovan lives and works in Manhattan, where he edits Wild Horses of Fire blog (whof.blogspot.com), curates the events series Peace On A, and coedits ON, a new magazine for contemporary practice. He attended the Poetics Program at SUNY-Buffalo and is an ongoing participant in the Nonsite Collective.

Rob Halpern is the author of Rumored Place, Imaginary Politics, and Snow Sensitive Skin (co-authored with Taylor Brady). Disaster Suites will be published this Summer by Palm Press. He's currently co-editing the writings of the late Frances Jaffer together with Kathleen Fraser, and translating the early essays of Georges Perec, the first of which, "For a Realist Literature," can be found in the recent issue of Chicago Review. He lives in San Francisco.

***
From Disaster Suites by Rob Halpern:

This war
Of want
Says what

I want
To say
To you

Of dreams
Or need
We need

Not speak
To speak
Of wars

Of want
I come
To love

So late
To you
My lost

- marine.

***
from O Coevals by Thom Donovan

We witness bells that this was theirs
That shade equals sun in exquisiteness

Non-identities piling up like pylons
A physics without cars beings without

Impact move to what here to what
Their equated it I feel so much pressure

Around you to burn a discourse and not
Touch any time we were or event

Living us so live my life will never finish
What my death leaves unfinished this

Town never seems to work those sovereign
Stumps sing us into battle effects

Of power fires hymns even the sun
Forgot to burn so sing patiency which

Organs won't be consumed what ex
change won't always be sung for being

Too far from off-shore what bodies we
Haven't won't account for limbs little

Substances Nature complicit with who
Gets to live grieves its contrivance.

***
from Amanda Ackerman:

Here on fire we remove the husk of the seed with the aching to peel back with the aching to hear; to touch is to look, the seed looks like and says this:
It is spring, but my corn does not want to sell her rooster. If I wait another year, the rooster will be considered old, quite old, very old. And having been an upright and tireless citizen his whole life, always dressed in devoted red, always smelling like humid, dank gems and unbottled musk, the rooster will start to make up stories about how he fought in the war, welded the sides of tanker ships, wore a shattered, sandy green army helmet. Then no one will want to buy him, it's just a matter of timing. Let him stay and my lips will keep moving, turn the shapes of fortified roots, and I can stay forever awake in the dark folds of nucleotides, always siding with what is right, always siding.

***
See you then...
www.palmpress.org