Testimony
I was not in love with the soft film. I was embedded
in a nation of flies. I wasn’t particularly he
loves me, even when hid
from noonlight’s viscous discoursing. My friends
don’t stop postulating, they’re very that, and taken
by the crime’s continued unpeeling
from the grippable, a handle
on things I just can’t bring myself to
and sit too much, one of many unwholesomenesses
to reflect on. Do I remember, no, the last time
I saw my blood which is not romantic
blood not evidencing life any more than not blood.
It bears as the poor whole world bears remarking,
endures our pinched and gelatinous ideas. Often
it is said of people now that they have SLAMMED
untoward actors. I, too, SLAM
my bliss for one, which keeps me
like a bird, a fretwork of predisclosure and bounced
pangs, mirrory, worked. Being mindful
of desire’s fossil stricture-structure
doesn’t keep non-wanting from feeling
like dying for me. The land of my birth still
swells and contracts like a solitary lung. We could
get on with half as many New Feelings
despite their canny embossment
with cutting directional markers,
their highlit light. Someone says of the poem,
it wrecked me, it gutted me, it blew my head off.
A squeamish idolator of violence chooses
art. I’ve seen the mortar of that church in my streams,
did the banana yellow soft boy thing
for a time, though my aspect now is unnervingly
unclogged, and my grip quieted, braced as the braced
page for the page’s end, ambrosial emblem.
Complaint
I was told this would broaden my horizons.
I was told there would be a break for lunch.
I wasn’t told they’d be power-drilling
the floor before my beverage order and
the sitting down to drink it and the looking
plaintively out.
I was told my plaintive look would attract
co-travelers.
People will tell you all kinds of things if
You let them.
They tell you do you take this
Bus regularly? after telling you
Spring sprang or but my heart was kind of set
On duck or they should have listened to me
about the carpet.
Submerged in oscillating mercies they
Tell you each day what each day you forget.
They have a new archaeologist boyfriend.
Their roommate is a bad comedian.
They have one more session of work on their
Molars thank god.
No tell me for real did
You see it already? I don’t want
To see it with you if you already
Saw it you’ll be all haha this part’s so good.
biography
JAMES LOOP’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Lambda Literary, Prelude, and elsewhere. Performance and audio work have been presented in collaboration with Montez Press at Mathew Gallery NYC and Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair, and at the Material Art Fair in Mexico City. A recipient of the Himan Brown Award for Creative Writing, he lives in New York, where he manages the Belladonna* Series.