Joe Hall
For it is spilling and spilling from several terminals
for it is coming and here and coming
for that as long as we live and after
is a flood, brimming to the lip
for it requires so much work
beyond planning, piled
against the windows, the eyes, crossing boundaries
to become its own life blooming
shit, exuberant
thank you drain? thank you gravity? nope no no
nope no 1.3 kg matter, some fos.fuel into 2 g
microchip, iPhone 22 chips,
a 12 yr old (JG Dig waste 26)
junk expresses beyond production -
in exchange, consumption
NOTE: STOP HUMPING RAGPICKER
(cont'd page 2) from THOUSANDS OF GARBAGE STRIKES, THOSE DOCUMENTED, EASY TO FIND: New York, NY 1667; Mumbai, India 1878; Toronto, Ontario 1918; Paris, France 1948; St. Petersburg, FL, 1966; New York, NY, 1968; Memphis, TN 1968; St. Petersburg, FL 1968; Miami, FL 1968; Lubbock, TX 1968; Cleveland, OH 1968; Charleston, SC 1969; New Orleans, LA 1969; Oklahoma City, OK 1969; Atlanta, GA 1970; London, Great Britain 1970; Tokyo, Japan 1973; New York, NY 1975; Atlanta, GA 1977; Detroit, MI 1978; San Antonio, TX 1978; Tuscaloosa, AL 1978; Philadelphia, PA 1986; New York, NY 1990; Toronto, Ontario 2002; Chicago, IL 2003; Athens, Greece, 2006; Vancouver, British Columbia, 2007; Naples, Italy, 2008; Seattle, WA with Columbus, OH with Buffalo, NY with Mobile, AL, 2012; Guangzhou, China, 2008, 2012-2013; Birmingham, UK, 2017; Paris, France, 2018. ABSTRACT: A work: to be w/ppl
w/multitudes, not take
shit Work an obsession
w/turning trash around
as tactic, "Art must be destroyed
in order to not become
merchandise or an institutional icon" Heriberto Yépez
w/years work bad and failure
to fix it w/anyone, go tho we try
dumb hope in my mouth
NOTE: STOP HUMPING RUINS
if this is trash
send it back
HERE IS SOME PROSE
AZ server farm churns the image of a tidiness coach, blasts
fuel in tons burning to cool itself before collapse > extraction, flood
hits thrift store That the other of production of light
dematerialized distributes far beyond the horizon
I streamed the image of the moon hollowed out then caving
in on its huge and heavenly self from the intake of the server farms
mined into its surface In a pinch policed
inventory becomes waste looters transform
to life The contents of my mouth & colon
ATM for penthoused stranger CRT
monitor up to 8 lbs lead 2lbs copper desktop 620
lbs rock drill of the horizon for the island deep
sea for the continental shelf the asteroid
moon, and lunar dust, for the horizon the drill of the horizon
for the sublime is a scraping drill res extensa
is yr being yr being yr being & yr
being to them
Hired to take a bunch of shit from her acerbic boss
"your job to make X happy" records it
delivers the load Whole shifts
of my only life spent clicking
shit in the group inbox into the trash last in
first out-no one else would bother
Will there be beautiful city or ward
shitatoriums many gendered
and degendered, single and multistalled
spaces of beautiful excretion? Will there
be a space of public salvage and reclamation
and disassembly of the greatest machines of violence?
Will we celebrate the decommissioning and destruction
of pernicious things and institutions?
Will the work of disposal be in perpetual rotation
or purely elected? Redeem the hours spent
soaking someone's sour feelings
exporting memory an account in
bags of tumor-fertilizing sediment
w/clear labels re: vintage provenance
thick-bottomed tumbler w/alphabet
block sized ice cube melting
in cocktail of lead dioxin
ICE field offices flush their shit
Trump Towers flush their shit
The Westin Hotel fellow tenant of Buffalo's
ICE field office draping a point
of carceral intake with the façade of comfort
flushes its shit If we can't
separate ourselves from shit if we don't
involve it in some other process
we die If the rich can't
export their guilt past the gates of their community-
if we don't let the execs out of the vacuum bag
if no trash left the police station, gated communities
if no trash left the board rooms of Silicon Valley
if no trash left the White House
or last 3 bosses offices
if all I do is talk
On Other Water
where I lived in the winter without heat
waking to swans' fleets on the fingered inlet
what did I love? the nutria's orange teeth
and who else was poor here, swam naked
where travelers were, what heavy
industry's century makes it take
on its humped back
the community boat
in an inner lake
wading as the currents shift
clouds swell with rain
from wrack, image farms
trails gorgeous planets, letters of frost
dew by nine
Laban Meatpacking
rainscapes, slabs of thunder clouds
over matrices of seedheads arrhythmically dripping
silicon so each object is its own gliding
poem with fountain, some Jacob
paints a stick with stripes, plants it by the pond
and watches, huddled in the reeds
lips of mud sucking on his ankles
cattle drink then turn
tail first into big Styrofoam numerals
that backfloat toward
a maze of metal echoing tubes
Joe Hall is a deprofessionalizing academic in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of five books of poetry, incIuding Someone's Utopia (Black Ocean, 2018) and the forthcoming Fugue & Strike. In the last decade he has performed at squats, concrete piers, universities, and bars in most of the lower 48 and Canada.