A Sing Economy Symposium

For the duration of 2008, Flim Forum poets are singing the economy. See: the contents of our November board meetings...


Sing it to the ceiling
from How We Saved the City by Kate Schapira
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from The New New Deal by Mathew Timmons
On the Mohegan Sun Bus with Robert of Kinshasa by John Cotter
May by Lori Anderson Moseman
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
from Your Imagined Reader by Jennifer Karmin
Poem by Kate Schapira
Tuesday by Barrett Gordon
The Burgaloos by Kaethe Schwehn
from The A Down by Tawrin Baker
I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut by Eric Gelsinger
Take Aim by Barrett Gordon


...and look for new Econo-poems in this forum throughout the month of December, as we continue infrawriting the reconstruction.

The Inland Sea

The Inland Sea
by Brandon Shimoda

Tarpaulin Sky Press
6" x 8", perfectbound, black endsheets, 40 pages.
$10

Normally

2

goal,
water bars

old wet
trigger vacant

binge into white
rice red leaf
not to plug
the hole or
un-pend queue

however randomly
the weather
to finish at 3
when i come
out & things
weigh
down
but to their strength &
place floats old
sticks w/ water thoughts






3

the unplayed horn
of the goat u-turns
back slowly to pick
the lock

alley's larval moan
mobs the mulberry-
died & -shaded walk

noise-hop, kodak city
crag w/ plunger-bridge
& air-chain truss







4

tumble satellite
extra-fine
detritus
company bound
↑, a(root)float

the pressure too
however imaginably
sky- ____-high
nut-wound round
the bolt tight
___high
& snap-button dry
on water magic
falling normally




excerpted from a poem by Barrett Gordon
art: Take Aim by Barrett Gordon

see A Sing Economy

The Alps

by Brandon Shimoda




ISBN 978-0-9790888-2-7
144 pages, 7x9
$14 (+ $2 shipping & handling)

or:

Send a check for $16 to:

Flim Forum Press
PO Box 549
Slingerlands, NY 12159

Query: klane at flimforum dot com

Browse: flimforum.com




More on The Alps

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

Observing soup kitchens should teach you the power of ambition.






Handshakes strengthen memory.






A good teacher will instruct you to cultivate your image as much as your learning.






There is no stick hard enough to drive me away from a man whom I can better in a deal.






Watch a cashier, a laborer, a cleaning woman, and you will conclude that man is the stupidest of animals. But watch a dealmaker, a fund manager, or a diplomat, and you will beg if creation can display a finer thing.






Poverty is a halter. Any man with a grip will yank it.




Why India, friend? Can you not buy their rich cigars and pretty sandals in America?






Ask some old money for a hundred dollars, and they give you a thousand. They do not give as they are asked, nor act as if they earned it.






Share a plate of oysters with old money, and they will savor each bite, talk discursively, even let fall napkins – anything to make sure you eat more than your share. Their type is easy, their generosity is stylized greed, their magnanimity degrades.






If you’re going to be a dog, you might as well be a bad dog. If you’re going to be a man, though, be a man.






excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

The A Down

Determined his default logic's
Struggling within a sick metaphysic.

"What I mean is when I think maybe I identify with certain thoughts, maybe that's—and they might jump from this to that, and all the while I'm scratching my ass, shifting in my chair. Someone might come over and say 'hi' absentmindedly and my attention's on them, but it's still not me who's acting there, the center" I know that that's a tree "held barely edges in—the worn curtains revealing of an ecology of social surplus, as fruit color energetic surplus—holding"




Bureaucratic order forms.

I've made a few assumptions, but have yet to work out their conclusions. For instance, take "the first principle," that of non-contradiction. "For instance. Take" the first principle "that of non-contradiction," take the first "that" of the "non-contradiction" principle for "of for the" that instance principle, take first "non-contradiction."




Partly because I like to keep it fresh, and avoid adapting, and partly because my schedule is subject to interruptions and I need to workout when I can, however I can.

Since our hip flexors are generally stronger than our ab muscles, we rely on them by yanking ourselves up as our hip flexors tug on our spine. But she was also able to talk and laugh as we visited and I told her I was proud of her for that, and for so many things. The former you can get from watching. The circumstances that led to the victim going to the floor included noise, terror, seeing others shot, concern for his classmate, overwhelming confusion about what to do. But laying on the floor is a bad idea. But laying on the floor is a bad idea. CCC Here at World Stock Report we work on what we here from the street. Big news expected. This should invoke LARGE gains.



from The A Down by Tawrin Baker

in A Sing Economy

THE BURGALOOS

I will tell you a story about a black virgin glove.

Shy glove.
Shy glove.

Never a hand in the glove.
sunset + love = good kind of glove.

But we were robbers.
We were burgaloos.
That’s what we called ourselves, me and Tom.

Tom liked to press the belly of the Happy Chef.
I liked to place a blade of grass between my thumbs and blow.

I cut my mouth once, so hard did the grass reverberate against my lips.
That’s why they call it a blade, asshole, said Tom.

We let the glove lay tenderly on the dash while we robbed banks.
While we robbed army surplus stores.
While we robbed a house with orchids in the windows.

Next to the orchids was a harp and next to the harp
a framed poem called “The Load Star.” It began

I don’t know how. But the neck of the harp was womanly and soft
like a stilled northeasterly wind. Movement glinted in the fiber.

Tom wrapped his arms around the harp and lifted it to his chest.
I did not open the door for him.

Instead I examined the orchid, the deep purple color in the center
fraying and scattering as the color moved up the petals.

I thought of my mother and the cancer in her chest.
I thought of the log we split open in the woods and then
the leg of a man we shot and how it kept kicking.

With my mouth I made no sound.
I went back to the car and put on the glove.

Tom, I said, let’s drive away from here.

My hand was warm inside the glove.
Greatness reared her head in front of me.



poem by Kaethe Schwehn

see A Sing Economy

moonlit 3

quite a few flim poets--kate schapira, matthew timmons, harold abramowitz, amanda ackerman (all victims of a sing economy), & adam golaski--and a coupla friends 'o flim--kathleen rooney & elisa gabbert--appear in the newest issue of moonlit, edited by lisa janssen & clair mcmahon, which suggests to me a rather solid book. ch-ch-check it.

Matter of Days

1

just about
bone dry
w/ upward
dust mobile
can not
now as dampness had
slept-thru

things take the place
whistle dry
sit-in
chokes the
croon under
head
the volunteering guard
whimsy

all pacing day in
to & out the _____, what is it?
barrel
wagon
?
out—over
strapped to middle

in the park wherever

all distance caves
& more suspect
life’s just so

for win—total immeasurable gain

matter of days




excerpted from a poem by Barrett Gordon
art: Tuesday(2) by Barrett Gordon

see A Sing Economy

The opposite of credit is blame

My sweater, which I wash in the bathtub because

of the economy, is sour and stiff. I get a hanger.

I hang it from the fire escape. When I bring

it in it’s soft, smells good. I don’t

attribute this to the fire escape, its metal or rust.




I want a map of the moon.





Now appearing with failure, its source.

Everyone wants to know for blaming purposes

now that they can’t save. Something to do.





The moon’s disc fits over the sun’s disc

by accident, but wanting can be powerful.




My friend explains mortgage bundles carefully over

and over email, using analogies, but nothing

but wanting is exchanged, right up

to the minute of total obscurity.





Maps work by analogy. Trying

to navigate is only like.

The opposite of credit is blame.




poem by Kate Schapira

see A Sing Economy

The Words Go Round

alphabet | pocket | world

currency you got art to make words from one mouth to another a concentration of wealth receipts yada yada this economic poetry poverty makes the world go round do you got spare change in your pocket in your poem can you bankroll these syllables an enterprise of language a tax deductible alphabet a cut back cut up cut off page a long term plan a big mac big chief can’t remember what you bought but make it bigger



from Your Imagined Reader by Jennifer Karmin

see A Sing Economy

Fomalhaut b: fhqwhgads

Faced with economic meltdown, the universe blithely continues to expand. From one globe to another: panic! O Fomalhaut b, bask in Fomalhaut's glow whilst ye can. News from the universe: Fomalhaut b's moon will be called fhqwhgads.

I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

Children are genetic capital.






Before you go into a job interview, it is best to practice on statues.






It was when I decided to leave The Fund, that I did my best work: ensuring good feelings.






When my brother, now a senior citizen and restaurant manager, asked me why I was late to dinner at his house, I said I didn’t want to watch him work.






Experience turns a woman from loving handsome men, to loving successful men. Just so, experience turns a young man from giddiness with quick riches, to respect for paying one’s dues.







When I was called to the board to account for an error I made, I told them I’d only come to see how great other men can be.




When the Founder asked me what he could do for me, I told him: let me be useful.






Great crowds are the strength of the citizenry.






The first time I saw a computer, I bought it.






We can only explain you, bum, by assuming your mother was penniless the night she begot you.







To be strict and optimistic is a judicious response to those who want money; it will demonstrate for them what it is they truly lack.






To be saved from folly you need either trustworthy friends or well-paid employees. To be saved from ruin, know what trustworthy and well-paid mean.




excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

Manage Reverence by Singing Mercy

8 May 1546

Reverend Lord Vicar-General* ordered the offending

weevils (a colony of "creepers") to pay their tithe
without delay to make three processions
around the vineyards in which they had feasted.

Having escaped excommunication, the beetles left
before, we think, completing their required devotion.
So we (with pitchfork and prayer) tromped clockwise
1, 2, 3 times round the grapes singing mercy mercy.

10 May 1979

To this day our hounds round the worn path with us.
The youngest son of the oldest man leafs out: green
face, green hands, foliage from his mouth. We toast
1, 2, 3 times round the grapes singing merci merci.

We take turns being Reverend Lord Vicar-General.
If a bee light on your arm, you're to do his homing
dance, circle your footsteps (1, 2, 3) decrying,
for God himself, the right of all creatures to consume.





8 May 2525

To produce a vision of our past, we trace beetle paths
in bark. Yes, there's still trees. Pheromone planning
controls the pests. We keep our best vines secreted
away from those still bent on Mars. Foliage abounds

from each corner of the mouth. The middle of three
daughters leads the parade: 1, 2, 3, times round home.
Lording the particular over the general, we manage
reverence by singing mercy. Pitch forks tuning us.

May from All Steel by Lori Anderson Moseman

see Oh One Arrow

_____

* If it wasn't Reverend Lord Vicar-General, it was someone like him.

See page ix of Luc Ferry's Ecological Order (U. of Chicago Press, 1992).

Sun Bus

These roads! In three hundred
Years, we will never

Have these roads. And can I see the red man?
What do they look like? Are they red like

that car?
No? Copper?

Ah! Do they have the
Same rights as A-

mericans? And who provides
security for their region?

I have heard of that, and of Martin Luther
King. And do they make a

thousand dollars a day?
Ten thousand?

More? You
know, I think you must love your

country—where are we?—because at home there are no roads like
This, no bridges like this. I

Think the
Cold makes you innovate, we cannot

innovate. In three hundred years, we
may have roads like this, but I don’t

think we will, because
somehow the world has to end.



On the Mohegan Sun Bus
With Robert of Kinshasa
by John Cotter




see Oh One Arrow

The New New Deal

The New New Deal is upon us. The president can either lead the charge or be run over by it. This upsurge will be called The New New Deal, and it presents a plan to deal with... The New New Deal! One of our greatest frustrations is when we collectively get wrapped up in theoretical discussions about The End of Reform and The New New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War... The New Republic of The New New Deal is original. It represents solid economic engineering and a straightforward Time of progress in The New Era of The New New Deal.




The New New Deal talks about The Rabbits Going Back in the Hat, The Dance of the Crackpots, Welcoming the Enemy: and The Ride of the Wild Rabbit--summarizing a wide variety of ambitious but viable projects to improve all of our country by launching what's called The New New Deal--a multipronged plan founded upon Bankruptcy--The New New Deal!

The New Republic of The New New Deal will be mindful of both the successes and disappointments of The old New Deal of the 1930's. Conservatives and small government types are going to be run over by The New New Deal!


from The New Poetics by Mathew Timmons

in A Sing Economy

publicly complex

sat. night kate schapira, host of the publicly complex series, invited adam golaski and andrea henchey to read at ada books in providence, rhode island. a good turnout in a delightful setting. highly recommended. check out these upcoming:

Isabelle Garron, Sarah Riggs & E. Tracy Grinnell
Sunday, 11/16, 6 pm
Ada Books, 717 Westminster St., Providence, R.I.

&

Jeffrey Yang and Katy Lederer w/ special guest Forrest Gander
Saturday, 11/22, 6 pm
Ada Books, 717 Westminster St., Providence, R.I.

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I have come to strengthen the currency radically cut

I have come to strengthen the currency.






Everything belongs to someone.






Difference drives commerce, it drives envy, it steers.






A friend is a fellow investor.






In America, even the boys are men.






We have more possessions and live longer than animals.






Praise your boss’s faults and mimic his virtues.






No two prices are the same.






Wealthy by anyone’s standards: wise, independent, and content.




excerpted from a set by Eric Gelsinger

see Oh One Arrow and Buy Later

How We Saved the City

To belong to ownership: a twist too neat for inverse. The signs are going up everywhere, like rabbits along the highway. Looking around, we see them. Root the birds' -nest fungi out of the aloe pot. Humble underpinnings, that desire has. Safe to own: the warp in your board, meld in your corner, to set your windows in. We should hang out our shingle: one kind of math or another done here. Every tenant's shingle should be out. The floor slopes from its hump. Time paid for by the wet trees that surround us explains the difference between "fewer" and "less." Properties. And less. Ownership links and sets through the city, puts on, shrugs off. Shuns and shuts out the bleared opposite.




Architecture supports each moment financially, moments that could be floating their independence over bridges. So say borrowed dwellers, tender more (weirdly, mathematically) to some moments than others. Not dream-logic but of the dream house, it proceeds, we can state about it. A waterdrop changes the shapes of everything nearby through reflection, not accuracy, just reflection. It isn't a true mirror or a rear-view or a mugger's mirror or the one James found on garbage night, big as me, with carven frame. All over the city in the waterdrop members members of a privileged group rise early and snap at their husbands.




The belief that ownership will save the city qualifies, comes under the heading, or falls. It's like saying that slow dreamlike boats piloted by mimes will, or dirty Valkyries on bikes. It's like going without saying to a city made of wood, PVC pipe and brick, bundles of hair that used to be rats and tax forms and windows that can't be saved, this way: teetering on the lip of preservation. Sill of surface tension. City snapped at that moment. The key on rent day sears the hand, the office cools me by name, i hand over my math. Posters up for the New Urbanism, olive- and rust-colored friendly fire. Blades of fans that fall with a crash for no reason, or a rented wind. Apartment like paid silence, house, an alibi. Fewer lots, but less time.


Safe as Houses by Kate Schapira

in A Sing Economy

Sing it to the ceiling

The evening was alive with first responders. Poets, report, restoring song to the dollar. Daily drilling, bottom lines, dying signs, in the streets all day. Negotiate atoms and national ethos, form and efficiency, input and output, sin and celebration. Sense and memory, happiness radii, spatial happenstance interface. Desire, dinner, damn cameras, family houseflies, worms and a swarm of eyes. Rain for rent, cattle for sale, cryotext sandwiches, a pumpkin in the bassinet. Cost of walking, cost of talking, breathing shoals of technology, new kinds of knowing. Oh, emotional ecosystems. Oh, local and global grief. Key conservation, relative abundance, savior selves, we are on that brink, over / whelmed thin dime. Sing: shingle and shingle and bricks and windows. Sing: research and development, fall off and shatter, offer/answer/transaction. Sing: Gigigigigigigive. Sing: next and next and next annexed. Love with a love that was love than love. Sing it to the ceiling.

more on A Sing Economy

Rabbit Face The Alps

e. points to the rabbit's face + sez: "eye." Then, "nose." But the way she pronounces the words: "I" + "no." Something anti-descartesian about this rabbit exploration.

Cynicism, of course, is no longer cool. Thank goodness. Nothing generates worse poetry. + hope springeth. People smile in the streets, Europeans are slightly less frightened of us, + the office manager at the university had cake in the common room, simply because America is awesome once again.

The reason for all this change? Brandon Shimoda's The Alps. I will always remember where I was when The Alps arrived from the printer. There's no doubt about it; since the release of The Alps, more cookies were baked, more wars were discontinued for lack of interest, + more flim forum poets found prosperity.

Proof? The proof, m'dears, is inneth the puddingeth:

Stephanie Strickland has a new book, ZONE : ZERO; Laura Sims' new book, Stranger, is forthcoming from our friends at Fence; + Harold Abramowitz's new book, Dear Dearly Departed, is due soon. Jessica Smith and Amanda Ackerman have poetry at the very cool Womb Poetry. Adam Golaski is reading at Kate Schapira's series, hosted by Ada Books, in Providence on Saturday the 8th. Lastly (for now), John Cotter has just put up a new issue of Open Letters.

Yup, all this good fortune--and more!--is due to the release of The Alps. Don't be surprised if you see people rubbing their copy of The Alps. Don't be surprised when you crack open your fortune cookie + inside is The Alps. Don't be surprised if you order The Alps, + soon after win a big pink teddy bear at the carnival. Did the candidate you want to win the election win? Yeah, The Alps. What was the prize baked into the cake brought by our office manager? The Alps.

I will be most curious to hear e. read The Alps outloud. For I believe only then will I penetrate its most hidden wisdoms, the wheels that turn our fortunes to good.

all saints day alps

the alps is out and orders for copies are tumbling into the flim offices. that folks are excited about the alps is hardly surprising. what has surprised me is how rapidly the book has penetrated popular culture.

last night--halloween--I counted seven trick-or-treaters dressed as brandon shimoda. one shimoda mask in particular caught my eye: by squeezing a pump, hidden in the tongue of a sneaker, the wearer caused letters to flood across the face, just as in real life! some of the cheaper, knock-off shimoda masks looked--oddly enough--quite a lot like jaye bartell.

that so many of the neighborhood kids already owned a copy of the alps did present one problem--I had to dash to CVS to pick up copies of organic furniture cellar and our parenthetical ontology to give as treats!

my mask? a klane face, of course.