The following is a selection from the seven poems by Bruce Andrews that first appeared in Conjunctions:15.
Dear World, fuck off advice ingredients, empty swing. Studies show that couples who try to avoid arguments tend to average higher happiness scores. Sizes carried, class analysis, men’s consciousness-raising, medieval robbers, no one seems to know how many. There are freshly dug graves, but children were buried together, driven to obscurity by the unconscious need to cover up the defects of the argument. ‘I’m a knee fetishist,’ sit up, arching the back a little, the transformation of a worker into a mere hand. Noises? Smells fresh but doesn’t linger = semen disinfectant, 20 kilos of heroin; if I had lost the race, I could start over, but by winning I get to race again. Eat letters! Excavations, soft minimals, ELITIST INTENSITY—institutions no more than the barricades of repression clapping his twists. Great foster argument; crabbing which count mere heart shiver joints. Kick out stiff rubbed slow far fell crib. Was eagerly—presses. Violent Crimes by Young Girls on the Upswing Across U.S. without the oppressive shadows of our protective images intruding. Clocks spike pupil visa–goes to Africa on Vacation, Returns with Bride He Bought from Tribal Chief. It’s like giving your whole body a facial.
Mavericks do not become great leaders. The organization is more the weighing of one part against another within a whole than the building of a whole through systematic succession. She is a child playing house inside her own enthusiasms, the kind of success that can only be measured in loss, a lot of useful scrutinizing, the insidious connection develops between economic dependency and sexuality. S, S, S & s & s, an intellectual: someone living articulately beyond her or his intellectual means. We have no other, a phrase that badly needs study. Nonsense bargains. I don’t want an art of visual aids, this is the problem of an index. Events now followed with bewildering rapidity. What shit about loaves and fishes? Meet-me-tonight-cowshed. Vestiges of illusionism do not overpower but assume their place in a revealed activity—“the terms I like to see,” … Faith-less Love, “defensive communication.” Well grubbed, old mole! Taken as a whole, they are like quicksilver do’s and don’ts—what is the status of ‘always’? Ten trillion flies cannot be wrong: Eat shit. Like a searchlight that had found its target, man’s auditory equipment is similarly elaborate. (‘No beliefs to propel him, only imposed but arbitrary obligations.’) The touchdowns are the triumphs of will.