start

I Woke Up
By Jameson Fitzpatrick
and it was political.
I made coffee and the coffee was political.
I took a shower and the water was.
I walked down the street in short shorts and a Bob Mizer tank top
and they were political, the walking and the shorts and the beefcake
silkscreen of the man posing in a G-string. I forgot my sunglasses
and later, on the train, that was political,
when I studied every handsome man in the car.
Who I thought was handsome was political.
I went to work at the university and everything was
very obviously political, the department and the institution.
All the cigarettes I smoked between classes were political,
where I threw them when I was through.
I was blond and it was political.
So was the difference between “blond” and “blonde.”
I had long hair and it was political. I shaved my head and it was.
That I didn’t know how to grieve when another person was killed in America
was political, and it was political when America killed another person,
who they were and what color and gender and who I am in relation.
I couldn’t think about it for too long without feeling a helplessness
like childhood. I was a child and it was political, being a boy
who was bad at it. I couldn’t catch and so the ball became political.
My mother read to me almost every night
and the conditions that enabled her to do so were political.
That my father’s money was new was political, that it was proving something.
Someone called me faggot and it was political.
I called myself a faggot and it was political.
How difficult my life felt relative to how difficult it was
was political. I thought I could become a writer
and it was political that I could imagine it.
I thought I was not a political poet and still
my imagination was political.
It had been, this whole time I was asleep.

A library

Emergent Strategy - adrienne maree brown
Caliban and the Witch - Silvia Federici
My Grandmother’s Hands - Resmaa Menakem
Sister Outsider - Audre Lorde
Potential History, unlearning imperialism - Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
In Praise of Shadow - Jun’Ichirō Tanizaki + Japanese version
Counternarratives - John Keene
Being Human is an Occult Practice - Magdalena Zurawski
Of Forest and of Farms: On Faculty and Failure - Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves
Pleasure Activism, the Politics of Feeling Good - adrienne maree brown
Jambalaya, The Natural Woman's Book - Luisah Teish

Tina Campt
Listening to Images (introduction)

Valentina Desideri & Stefano Harney
conspiracy without a plot

Midwinter Day [excerpt]
I write this love as all transition As if I'm in instinctual flight,
a small lady bug With only two black dots on its back
Climbs like a blind turtle on my pen And begins to drink ink in the light
of tradition We're allowed to crowd love in
Like a significant myth
resting still on paper
I remember being bitten by a spider It was like feeling what they call
Stinging my thigh like Dante
the life of the mind this guilty beetle
Is a frightening thing
When it shows its wings
And leaps like the story of a woman who
once in this house
Said the world was like a madhouse
cold winds blowing
And life looks like some malignant disease, Viewed from the heights of reason
Which I don't believe in
I know the place Taken by tradition is like superstition
And even what they call the Literary leaves less for love
I know The world is straight ice
I know backwards the grief of life like chance
if I can say that
I can say easily I know you
like the progression
From memory to what they call freedom Or reason
though it's not reason at all
It's an ideal like anarchism though it's not an ideal It's a kind of time that has flown away from causes
Or gotten loose from them, pried loose Or used them up, gotten away
no one knows why
Nothing happens
There is no reason, there's no dream
it's not inherited
Like peace but it's not peace
there's no beginning
Like religion but it is not God
It's more like middle age or humor Without elucidation
like greeting-card verse This love is a recognized occasion
I know you like I know my times As if I were God and gave you birth
if I can say that I can say I am Ra who drew from himself
To give birth to Geb and Nut, Isis and Osiris Though it isn't decorous today to say this
instead I say You are the resource for my sense of decorum
Knowing you as Ra knew the great of magic, His imaginary wife,
and without recourse to love Men and women are like tears
I would lose my memory, I would sleep twelve hours, I would wake up
And get into my boat with my scribe,
I would study the twelve hours of the day Spending an hour in each
I would have a secret name I would rush upon the guilty without pity
Till the goddess of my eye in her vengeance Overwhelmed my own rage
as you and I take turns In love's anger like the royal children
Born every morning to die that night
I know you speak
And are as suddenly forgiven,
It's the consequence of love' having no cause Then we wonder what we can say
I can say
I turn formally to love to spend the day,
To you to form the night as what I know,
An image of love allows what I can't say, Sun's lost in the window and love is below Love is the same and does not keep that name I keep that name and I am not the same
A shadow of ice exchanges the color of light, Love's figure to begin the absent night.
Bernadette Mayer