Poems and Texts

“The Following are Proposed Facticities” by Celina Su

The Following are Proposed Facticities

Between you and me, larceny is da bomb.
Advocacy cannot be fair and balanced, only weighed.
The plasticity of his policies can be measured by pork barrels.
Social forces won’t keep me from my newly laced bootstraps.

All capitalists are bloodsuckers, supplying demand for first cities.
Her heresy is committed with the sound of one hand flinching.
Your veracious mendacities flop like giant manatees. Oh the humanity.
My hypocrisy can be cured via daily injections of hypercrisy.

I wear cheap peasantries, sweatshop-embroidered blouses.
Your pumped-up fallacy has achieved a new, shiny allure.
My leprosy is a figurative force, attached to the nerves.
Modesty prevents her from linebreaking on the streets.

Facilities with identity formation render me the same.
Between legitimacy and co-optation, a fine crash pad.
Participatory governance is an endless teleconference.
Whimsy me citizen, human, or just barely so.

An earlier version of this poem also appeared in Action, Yes.

Photo: Justin Blinder

Celina Su

Celina Su’s first book of poetry, Landia, was published by Belladonna* in 2018. Her writing also includes two poetry chapbooks, three books on the politics of social policy and civil society, and pieces in journals such as n+1, Harper’s, and Boston Review. Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and an Associate Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York. She was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and lives in Brooklyn.

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