from The Ganges
…since I exist as spore
as soldier of the intransigent
I contain as my essence no political sarcasm no model as extracted from 8 billion corpses
the Dharmasala* does not know me
does this mean I eat water
or soak my bread in various inks
or bake as my ointment excretion from bricks?
does this mean
that my skills are surreptitious
& persist by melancholia?
further
am I intangible embryonics
or ascetic exposure at the sunrise of kilns?
let me address such ascetic state as fervour
as supreme toil
as instigational pneumonics
as spent wood
as abrasive schist
yet to Rama & the Brahmins*
I rank less than an owl
I rank less than particles from basins
I am banned by withdrawal
by a series of stains due to partisan disclosure
to tampered spells
to exclusion voiced through tainted opinion
if I held a log by the strength of three fingers
if I broke a stone by the thinking in my heart
Indra* would deny me
bringing baneful gifts by means of staggered feeling
to Indra
I am a cleft eye
blistered limbs
neurotic tornadoes
he would give me none of the merits of birth
none of the wonders reaped by ingestion only me as result by staggering inclemence
as Shudra*
as remnant outside the main
as remnant outside a palace of hoaxes
so ringing a bell with my eyes
by describing the world through inverted verbalics I arrive at nothing other than death as seeming expansion
I am not fighting from neurotic view
mixing chaos with chaos
dye infested
scrambled
imposition has been placed upon me
exteriorized branding falsely inflicted
as candour
& these wounds
not only inflicted according to turbulent gain
but by all the minerals brewed by contiguous reason
which seeks to haunt
to clarify response through vernacular didactics
what I say contains no social script
no postures carved on a-priori porcelain
nor weight erected by extrinsic hexagrammatics through integer
so there never exists within me self-destructive structure
nor a privately hexed coronation
as Shudra
this is treasonous instruction
which simulates law by surreptitious invasion
perhaps I am teaching the poignant skill of corruption
or perhaps a treaty on insidious menace
let me evince as Shudra
on the germination of flaw & misnomer:
let me digress
let me come to the point of embittered declaration
of foils
of condensed & strewn example
first: blackened conjugal marks
disfigured striving
blazing social illegality
at next remove:
kinship broken
the general given marred
the Sun no longer witnessed
by the power of astute example
as penultimate phrasing: black remarks
ill-begotten lanterns
bodies stored & restored
as movement by ashes…
This fragment from The Ganges is a particle of a larger work entitled The Combustion Cycle, which includes two other very large works. One is entitled Concerning The Henbane Bird, and the other, On Solar Physiology. The former is enunciated by the second largest hummingbird on Earth, the Andean Hillstar, and the latter, by an Angolan Shaman. The Ganges is empowered by the voice of an Untouchable, and operates via hyper-dimensional language. The Combustion Cycle is a book of indigenous consciousness, with its European element functioning at a more ancillary level.
Glossary
Dharmasala: Buddhist rest-house for pilgrims
Rama: Hindu deity, embodiment of chivalry and virtue
Brahmins: class of wealth and privilege
Indra: Hindu guardian deity
Shudra: an Untouchable
hexgrammatics: coined term. In this context unwieldy grammar of number.
Editor’s Notes (Posit 15)
It is a bittersweet pleasure to introduce this magnificent fifteenth issue of Posit, coming as it does in the wake of what feels like an avalanche of national and global upheaval — both natural and human-made, toxically entangled as those categories are. But also: coming out on the heels of such a great loss for anyone interested in contemporary poetry. I’m referring, of course, to the death of John Ashbery, one of the greatest and most beloved poets of the past half-century. Although his loss hits hard, I find consolation in detecting his influence on so much of the poetry I love — and publish.
This issue is a perfect case in point, notable as it is for the singularity and variety of the voices it assembles — an aesthetic capaciousness which owes no small thanks to Ashbery’s paradigm-shifting work, which demonstrated by contagious example the extent of what is possible. Which ranges, in this issue, from the sizzling imaginative fertility of Will Alexander’s monumental monologue to the analytic calm of Robert Okaji’s meditations; from the poignant crises of Louis Bourgeois’ beautifully drawn protagonists to the understated humor of David Lehman’s and Stephen Paul Miller’s riffs on Frank O’Hara’s famous Lana Turner poem; from John Beer’s tidal flow of verbal riches to Charles Borkhuis’ razor-sharp yet deadly serious wit; from Patty Seyburn’s evocative experimentalism to Aliesa Zoecklein’s equally evocative lyric odes to love and loss.
To quote Mr. Ashbery, all of the work in this issue offers “what we need now:” these “unlikely / Challenger[s] pounding on the gates of an amazed / Castle” (“Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”). So I hope you’ll honor his passing by reading, or re-reading, his work — and theirs:
the revolutionary heat and devastating light of this fragment from Will Alexander’s tome, The Ganges, the “supreme toil” of its “treasonous instruction” in the voice of an Untouchable, that “remnant outside a palace of hoaxes” banned “to exclusion voiced through tainted opinion,” with its grim echoes of the meanness and menace in our contemporary political landscape;
the rhythmic fluidity of John Beer’s “The Fictive Hour,” “split[ting] the feast of [its] intentions” in wave after melodic wave, enacting the sensitive pursuit of meaning embedded in the quiddity of the moment becoming “the mother of itself;”
Charles Borkhuis’ grave yet bemused invitations to puzzle over “the truth . . . which withdraws from the slightest observation,” deploying the insights of meta-and particle physics in his signature precise yet playful demotic idiom to “thread the eye through an ear / and . . . wing it outward on a word;”
the tragicomedy of Louis Bourgeois’ Salingeresque tale of the clash of integrity with pragmatism under the pressure of social reality and, especially, of time;
Lauren Camp’s evocative lyrics lifting off from the springboard of the personal to touch the universal, rising from the “rant in my inbox” which “is many / fresh-fallen failures /masquerading as failures” to the desert clouds over a party which “plump / then conjugate / all the pleasure for hours;”
Robert Farrell’s aphoristic, incantatory meditations delving, like “a vehicle into a vehicle,” into works by Anscombe, Aristotle, Zosimus, and Hala Mohammed to propose that “[a]ll / things hang together even lives that meet their natural / ends;”
the sensitivity of Cal Freeman’s meditations on literary and personal heritage in which “no one knows / what to measure or how” in light of “the terrible affront and tacit / threat [our] presence constitutes / for every seen and unseen creature;”
David Lehman’s tribute to Stephen Paul Miller’s variation on Frank O’Hara’s “Poem [Lana Turner Has Collapsed!]” — each as wryly gentle in their counsel as the charming original — Miller’s version literally raising the stakes on O’Hara’s by virtue of the weight of what’s at stake (“oh Hillary Clinton you’re going to lose get up!”)— while Lehman’s version hovers with understated complexity between empathetic optimism and doubt of a candidate who might or might not share the social ease of the kind of gregarious narrator who “want[s] to meet you / whoever you are;”
The contemplative focus of Robert Okaji’s koan-like meditations on perception filtered through the metaphorical and philosophical implications of abstraction, in which “[t]he images consume no space but the effect is of distance;”
Patty Seyburn’s richly elliptical and compelling investigations into the vulnerability of the human body and the mythography of swans, entailing “something about anomaly” and “mimesis overload;”
Devon Wootten’s delicious excerpt from Gimme the Pretty, enlisting the reader to partner its probing of the nature and value of its own endeavor (yes, poetry, but not only), achieving any number of “truly epic volta[s]” as it delivers “what [we] came for— / realer done right,”
and Aliesa Zoecklein’s elegant explorations of the grief and hazard embedded in the paraphernalia of the ordinary: the sequin dress of a former lover, the sustenance of a grieving survivor, the “convincing curve” of a swimming pool beyond which “there’s a gate-latch moment when the stranger arrives.”
Thank you for honoring these artists with your time and attention.
Susan Lewis
Welcome to the visual art of Posit 15!
Jodi Colella uses traditional needlework skills to create artworks that are referential to the great traditions she is working within while also building a commentary on her travels throughout the world. Her work speaks to the evolving roles of women in Western and Non-Western cultures as well her experiences of the natural world.
Brandon Graving, a master printmaker, uses paper in interesting and innovative ways. She casts it, creating three-dimensional sculptures that seem to defy gravity. Her mastery of printmaking technique enables her to push the medium past its known limits until the results defy categorization.
There is a palpable visual rhythm and rhyme in the graphic work of Francis Pavy. His visual interpretations of the music of his native Louisiana dance and jump off the page. His ties to Southern American folklore and culture are deep, and he expresses them in a distinctly contemporary way.
The complex sculptures of Lina Puerta present a delicate and beautifully crafted view of the confluence of the natural and manmade worlds. Her great sensitivity to the found objects she often uses and her skills in combining them creates a universe that is simultaneously natural and artificial—as well as beautiful to look at.
Umar Rashid has created a new history of the American Empire. Through his brilliant and subversive series of faux-historical painting and writings he imagines a national history quite different from that taught in school. His pictorial style riffs on many historic sources and the result is something completely original. A self-taught artist, Rashid has combined his keen intellect with a sly sense of humor and political outrage.
Enjoy!
Melissa Stern