The Poetry Project

GIVINGHEED / TO / HEEDSGIVING AFTER SARA JANE STONER

A.O. Dolabi

GIVINGHEED/TO/HEEDSGIVING
AFTER SARA JANE STONER
A. O. DOLABI
I have a dream that one day...
THESE POEMS ARE DEDICATED
Hold my hand while I hold your attention?
“Look down. You will find solace on the way in studying what pavement your feet tread.”
“Lift your head. This is no time
to be shut up in your own thoughts, unheeding.”
Virgil, Canto XII Dante’s Inferno
Hey y’all! Hi Laura! Hi Sara Jane :-)
A thousand splendid thank-yous are in order. For your singular and concerted cares and concerns, labors and minutes, bodies dreams hearts info + know-how, minds needs rage seeds songs spirits tenderness, and attention: thank you. I appreciate your efforts, loves, and words. Laura: your community suturing. SJ: your tutelage and writings.
Writing is activism; activism is messy (and hard (like writing)). Thankfully I’m adept at my genre: bad writing. But poetry can be misleading. In any case, I’m grateful to all of y’all for struggling in and against and through language in the service of abolition, adequacy, community, pleasure, experimentation, and whatever else. I praise y’all championing the possibilities mushrooming between minor literatures.
Thank you for considering any part of this chapbook I wrote this week for Footnotes. Take what you want, leave what you want. The first poem was spoken by three of us together in a breakout room, and on that one I claim no authorship—less than anonymous!
Cheers, Alex
GROUP 3
Horns
Daemons heels
Retain
Return twist blister
velvet dark room
Violin song
Longer/dew memorytrace Lace collar
Koi dollar
why we bother Constricted friction Down grasshopper songs Secret tuck
Gray bubbles Mesozoic-cenozoic-what
EARTH, WHAT DID WE LEARN TODAY?
I’LL FORM MY THOUGHT IF YOU GIVE ME YOURS. WAIT, THIS IS IT: POETS DIE.
OK: POEMS ARE IMMORTAL.
CALL: WHY? RESPONSE: SHAPE AND POWER.
WHERE DOES A POEM DRAW ITS POWER?
HOW MIGHT THIS AFFECT
HOW MIGHT THIS ATTENTIVENESS
HOW MIGHT THIS CONNECTEDNESS
HOW MIGHT CHANGEFULNESS CHANGE A COURSE
WITH WORDS? MERE WORDS... DREAM ON MY READERS,
MY NEWEST FRIENDS :-)
I’M POSITIVE THAT YOU LIKE ME +
I <3 YOU; THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG...
THEY GESTURED IN THE NEGATIVE—
THE MOTION, FLESHBOUND,
TIMEBOUND CORPORAL AND DUTIFULLY GENUINE CONSIDERATE PLAYFUL, THE MOTION WAS JUST ANOTHER DAMN REACTION:
DEFENSIVE DEFENSIVE DEFENSIVE.
THE OLD WORLD TAUGHT US WALLS.
THE YOUNG EARTH SHOWED US BOUNDARIES AND PERFECT
CHALLENGES AND YOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE.
MY NEW COMMUNIST FRIEND,
THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH OBJECTS.
WHAT WILL WE NAME TOMORROW’S ATHEISM? NO GOD, ONLY THE SOUND OF FEET AND JOY STAMPING ON THE THRESHING FLOOR.
THAT’S RIGHT, YOU’RE INTERESTED,
AND HOW? I THOUGHT YOU PREFERRED MUSIC AND MOVIES AND DOGS AND BIRDS. OH, HONEY, I KNEW THAT ALREADY.
THIS IS SOUND IN THE SERVICE OF STRATEGY.
MY ANCESTORS WERE ARCHERS.
A MILLION NIGHTS AND A NIGHT WENT BY.
THE STORY CONTINUES...
THE DUNES MOVED...
LIKE MIGRANTS, LIKE A MELODY, LIKE THE WIND.
AS WILD AS IT SOUNDS, OASES ARE REAL, MERELY SPARSE, UNLIKE WORDS, UNLIKE THE MOMENTS
I YEARN FOR YOU.
AS FAR AS I KNOW,
OASES ARE REAL,
MERELY SPARSE,
LIKE OUR TIME TOGETHER.
ONE OASIS LED TO A CITY LED TO ANOTHER LED TO A RIVER LED TO ANOTHER LED TO THE SEA. LANDFORMS IN PURSUIT. SUBSTANCE ON PARADE.
The desiccation of quotidian Aberrations infects everyday Sense, a common consensus General okras
AKA
Abbreviations
How’s that for superfluous?
Clinging now (Jesus, why?)
Be honest
Enter: the archaeologist
Lame
Demonstrate
Your grandmama’s unconscious
A carton of cigarettes
Chock full of figs
Nothing gets wasted here
Not anymore
Karen spoke
What do you have in storage?
Nudes, bedding, gaskets, lamps, and tools Why?
Be honest
Remnants of lovers
Moments of the world
The attributes of the possible are wrought from the specters of dead notions spooking antikings, figures of the unity men sought
in the old world, the one we left
for magic to flip in the name of eternal curiosity. Love and knowledge, decrepit, bereft
of consistency, kreeping on our forebearers’ crypt— what was that? “Dialogue is so fun! On the way
to the future free of terrormade scarcity rifting
in the bosom of thinking machines competitive spectators expected the effects of composition
to deliver a soundtrack for tomorrow’s contemplative
community, redgreen.” Underneath the amusement
park Joel the gay archaeologist undusted cruelty,
so unnecessary. The gravel was good enough for the mint
to grow, growing everywhere, wild and healthy, a delicious herb ignorant of those outmoded languages rooted
in empirewaste (press conference: malicious
motives). Mariners today love whales and multiple goals. Still: an affinity for gold. You’re familiar with loving dirt, sour ground. History of murder. Nevermind.
By the end it made much more sense, which was The point of the whole process anyway: sensitivity! Once upon a time simulation took over the world. It happened quite recently. Protesting, preferring Essence over events, you demand I understand Simulation like the Hindus, the Catholics: Spectacular multidimensional hierarchies, Mutlibodied, corrupted, bleeding, always at war. This simulation just hits different.
Liberalism: “The ideology prevalent in the posthuman Transition to digital slavery.” Bifo goes on: “And then Nature selected them for extinction.”
The Cenozoic ended
You went for a walk
Rainy, cloudy, misty and gray Brooklyn in the A.M.
Et cetera

Work from GIVINGHEED / TO / HEEDSGIVING: Dis/Course with Sara Jane Stoner

Elsewhere