Reading in Carceral Tense
Vignettes of/with the Russian Dictionary of Imperial and Soviet Prison Slang
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Read -
Read“impression” and other poems
through my eyelids / yellow wall / of sun was I -
Read[…lakeside…] Against Passivity
For the sake of this poem as / a citable document, I’ll name / just the one breath this time -
ReadThe Jungle Book: Epilogue
I’ve been lying for a long time, so let me tell you a story. / We can never go back to who we were, despite the bravado -
ReadSometime Daughter
A partial erasure of King Lear -
ReadThis is a Body • Requiem / For Victor Gutierrez
This is a body / and this body is this thing of terror—how / in this world every / woman is a survivor and every… -
Readthese things now for my companions i shall sing beautifully
what would queer visions of the family network look like? -
ReadHTML Color Swatches in Black [Girl]
“taken-Black” …girl, too umber for proper / amber alert. Black / girl, skipped right past “missing” into / “Lost: B L A C K girl”. nobody / even noticed -
ReadInstructions for a Child of an Assembly Line
You are younger than her labor for [redacted aircraft manufacturing company]. -
ReadThis Country is Motherless and Makes me Forget
I am not. Two weeks or more since a call. To be in America, / You must see American, close your eyes and dream American -
ReadThere is No Other Way to Say This
Every morning the sparrows sing / Every day there is another funeral -
Readhere’s the space i carry. here’s the space that’s empty. • this our sunken sweet parade
so let’s talk then about unruliness / how it defies the joys of order & everything / that’s missed. -
ReadEnough Rain
Quail rise in ruffles from the sage. / Pebbles I scraped into my knee look / like they belong there. -
ReadIn Bad Faith
Elsewhere a bell rings /medieval in its calling and here / I fumble for a reliquary -
ReadNo One is Taking the Doughnut Shortage Seriously (and all that that implies)
— or the ketchup packet one / over in the adjacent deli, the dearth of good strawberries / in produce.