Tag: democracy

“It is a rallying cry for our enemies.”

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Wikipedia Poem, No. 876

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    personnel the paper foundationist movements 
media 
cultural ideas or past artist 
pain their extractor called security behind these  
       facts with their 
exceptable 
       context neue sachlichkeit: 
meaning  iran //  
      reveals simply   view of those meaning  iran  
 
trump’s war — trump’s  official 
faction of predisposition 
     and foreign-made 
    eventual owners michael etiennese 
added: 
     “we wisdom 
for america // target Oestern 
   Yementary" (look it up, Scotty) 
sense 
     the 
many-faced parchment  
   set upon this 
   sense      extractions in 
the journeyman withering
juxtaposition   
              
life, 
     see?
   a détournement
of media and cultural ideas or the past

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Sources:

Schambelan, Elizabeth. “ECLIPSE OF THE SUN.”Artforum International, 1 Dec. 2018, www.artforum.com/print/201810/eclipse-of-the-sun-77725. Print, page 189.

Obama, Barack. “Remarks by the President On National Security.” National Archives and Records Administration, 21 May 2009, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-national-security-5-21-09.

‘Transformed Creature’ by Liu Xia

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

Translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern

You have a strange pet—
one eye is a cat’s, the other a sheep’s.
Yet, it won’t socialize with felines,
will attack any flock of sheep.
On moonlit nights,
it wanders on roofs.

When you’re alone,
it will lie in your lap,
preoccupied,
slowly studying you until—
on its face—a challenge.

6/1988

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Source: Liu, Xia, Di Ming, Jennifer Kronovet, Herta Müller, and Yiwu Liao. Empty Chairs: Selected Poems. 2015.

Begin reading about Liu Xia here and then Google her name and pay attention to learn more. 

I encourage readers to purchase the book here, and listen to a conversation between poet Rachel Zucker and translator Jennifer Kronovet on a recent episode of the Commonplace Podcast. You can financially support (as I do) Commonplace Podcast—a brilliant, important project exploring the work of influential working artists—on Patreon.

Stein on France, Progress, History

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“The background of tradition of profound conviction that men and women and children do not change, that science is interesting but does not change anything, that democracy is real but that governments unless they tax you too much or get you defeated by the enemy are of no importance.”

Gertrude Stein in Paris France

American Womanhood

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

i see her sipping tea
she wants to write
the Great American Joke Book

about consumerism
sour-milk yellow sniffling yolk but

they get in the way
the hardcover wesleyan
in a cable-knit sweater
the canadian monthly
masked in a methylin-soaked love letter

hands up baby
hands up

“But if I said it was the only thing that mattered
That everything else was play, was yarn, was
A 40-year-old Knock Knock joke, would you”

their theories enjamb me
up against the wall, headlines
like licorice fingernails
like bricks — she draws blood

the thinking woman left to only sit
and listen to what’s left of rain
sweet and silent, waiting, pried
loose by synthetic rubber.

untitled, 082620120512

Joseph M. GeraceLeave a comment

keep yr both heels lifted
high above yr head

work is, we’re all sure,
a poor excuse for rules

mercy pockets burglar tools
but stalks from door to door

hopeful wields a rented ford
and searches for a little more

in spite of the police reports
neither will be seen or caught.