New System Technologies by Jen Currin

Immediately when they leave

they are taken out of the system

Blue at last the sky

impossible

Night gowning us in advance

I’ll paint my face

It might be appropriate

:

Iris scanners for travelers who want to fast track

For residents of condominiums

For state employees without hands

For high-end European nightclub frequenters

:

The place is taken out/a token

An indifference to bells

My cell phone’s low battery

Every monk will tell you

The place is a token

Paradise the verb

**

Jen Currin Poem translated by William Stobb

Dictionary No Dictionary

                                      “The world is all that is the case”

                                                  Ludwig Wittgenstein

(why I write these definitions

for shit I don’t even have a handle on like

“exchange of swirly shapes

through inner and outer space”—a butterfly

in Madison blows out a harmonica

in Portland and this is the world

okay?  This is the place, Johnson

to Boswell, “the taste,” to Tate,

“the oblivion”) ha ha. In mine 

Mother had a knee replaced

then fell and popped her shoulder

(“world”).  Better than my uncle

who had to grow new muscles

to swallow pills meant almost to kill him.

“More than that summer

week at your cabin” and love

is impossible remember:

some debris makes burning arcs across the sky.

From mine subtract fifteen orbits of friendship

like old-school surgery I’m unconscious

flayed gently beeping then punching

numbers and somewhere a cell

rings.  You answer.  Our lives are

not saved.  Mainly

I wonder what else happened? 

What’s your ring tone? 

What did the waiter think of you crying then snap

to the cook who slaps what on the omelet

(rings bell—“Nine’s up!”)

meant for you but served to the Senator.

Pull hard on those handcuffs.

Something I’ve never heard during sex play

but does that disqualify it metaphysically? 

Pull that chain.  Face the honest explanation

of ten years in your parents’ basement. 

See the links attached to this

paying of attention (“The sum

of all facts, fronts, flags for facing”)?  Pull.

A Russian soldier on Nevsky Prospekt

opened beer bottles with his arm stubs. 

For souvenirs I bought (“explosions

on every level to scale beyond thinking”)

propaganda posters.  I’m anti-

place I say in a paper (“Where anyone

can sit quietly and ring a chime”).  No

to faces.  No to cases.  Rapidly blinking

the world erases.  One white beam

pixels your iris.  A simple yes

and we’re through.

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