James Loop

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.