The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2023

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JUNE 2023 Issue
Poetry

The Rate At Which




“...to explode sentimentality and reveal in unappeasable truth the shivering (shimmering)
lone moments of human suffering.”



I cannot assume
to posit myself in position of
pain — wherein contemporaneity meets distraction, I made a mistake1


I cannot    assume
to posit myself in position of
pity


or be making of a sinister wind
to say of
martyrdom


is not the scenario
I might tinker


the thing I must find rigidity in, is the act.
Here, the enemy rears itself in it,
such being that the doings of fates becomes
satiated into alchemical veiling.


Fate co-opted. The body     of the oppressed.
Might I blame the act as an act of   the enemy, yes.
One lying in consequential perpetuity—
if, then, & if, then & & &


all the cuts of her, I cease any analogous rendering.
Yet, all the cuts, the many agape infringements
resemble



where the skin bears  witness        where the borders of truth find defection
where the openings                 break open.

              

1Wishing almost of a disappearance is like summoning oneself.







Like on the street,
two youngins call a laughter they are sharing
to my attention
yo bro look - they sound like me when I am not poeting.
A large man sits
plastered to the glass encasement of the bus stop


his ass-crack showing
and smudges of deep brown
slide
a liquid feces melt between him and the public-benefit corporate barrier
there is no separation of him & his shit,     spewing out


I mince
Nah deadass right
and they are correct to agree
with my agreement
of their laughter
received as disgust on me


It is the vulgar agitational
that interests me.
We are living within
the viscous nature of synthesis. We might say
that can’t happen or
never again,
but they are a scale of boundless happenings
a proposition is that we must see it
time & time & time
until it wills itself—more openly—into a force worth
choosing a tactic of elimination




she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying                & she is dying


& she is dying


& she is dying

& she is dying      & she   is    dying

& she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying                        & she is dying


& she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying

& she is dying                          & she     is            dying 
                                
& she is dying 
& she is dying 

& she is dying                                                                                              & she is dying 

& she is dying 
& she is dying 

& she is dying                                                              & she is dying 
she is dying 

& she is dying

& she is dying 

& she is dying                               & she               is                                                dying 

                                                       & she is dying 

                                                                      & she is dying 

& she is dying                                                                                                      & she is dying 

                                                                      & she is dying 

& she is dying

                                                     & she is dying 

                                                                    & she is dying 

& she is dying                                                              & she is dying 

& she is dying












A sweeping engulfment
dangerous cacophonous burling


sad, at some juncture of
bereavement
I wished I could kill him
how the shackles of air above shoulders
& at the inguen make of non-feelings







what silly pronouncements
a man & she
is dying
I see not enough
indignation
sure,
a sentence
of concrete whiff
of metal
sometimes


against exile of territory mechanics
when will we teach away the persisting?











& she is dying
falsely demonstrative
upon an entirety of us


parotid leakages
we ailing
thrive from her death


dribbling over
thrillers of her dead body
a tongue we share


dressing her
corpses
as pretty things


shames of
youth & fatality’s false romantic scent
the water we float within is clear


a liquid
of posturing
control







one should not sit at atrocity’s feet
to know it is amongst the
spiral orb cartography of our delicate flesh


look how it has gripped love’s nature
I cannot say it any other way
I refuse to let him live in a mystery
he is small & not worthy of veils
he is the problem
he is the he
demonstrative pronoun


he murdered my sister & unborn nephew
he murdered Jasmine & Riley
he murdered my sister & her unborn baby
a man murdered a woman & her unborn baby
he murdered her & her unborn baby


he murdered her & a baby
her & a baby
a baby
a baby
a baby
her


a baby
her
a baby
&

her &

a baby
her & a baby

her

a baby
her
a baby
&

her &
a baby her & a baby


her

a baby
her
a baby
&

her &

a baby
her                                               &                                                        a                                                                 baby
her
a baby
&

her &

a baby
her & a baby

her                                                                                                                                                                & 

a baby

her                                                                                                                                                                                                & a 

baby
her
a baby

her







What can make us a mess?
There is shit on the streets.


And an incalculable grammar of shit
building its mucosity
over our livelihoods


What can make us a mess?
and we afraid to show it.







We should not sit at atrocity’s feet
& wonder if it walks


there is a scent
of an imprint


& many trails
some of us have known labyrinths


others have known a spill that never
dries

Contributor

Jaylen Strong

Jaylen Strong is a poet-worker, librarian curator, elegiac archivist, friend (to those who are his friends), and knows his enemies well. He is concerned with the necessity of the poet as a tool for revolutionary thought-struggle, and steward for the people. He is currently living inside his manuscript Weep Not, a counternarrative document interrogating the arena of the death-tragedy of a beloved and grief-cartography.

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The Brooklyn Rail

JUNE 2023

All Issues