Philip Sorenson
from Men’s Fashions
The unlikelihood of coherence should be beneficial if the goal is to perform regicide as
reorientation away from content and into space, a threat to the head by means of
discordant captioning. But this is just pretense from the worst kind of offender: Do I
need to assist you in the shames? Is “overturning” the right word? It’s the cave where
the white book-victim is. Is it an outpouring made by the difference of caves? Why is
everything here spelled correctly? There also seems to be a lack of specificity: the
digital age is only used decoratively. He imagines what it’s like for you to film him; he
has seen you doing it.
* * *
From the second floor, you look down into the street.
There is a shark.
The shark is covered in garbage, and its tail is moving.
The shark is also a letter.
It is a T.
But it is really the head of Saint Denis, and the letters have fallen from men’s body:
portents for portents, livers.
Men is filming the shark with his phone.
Mediation is one component of this alchemical/political process.
The street scene is the finale.
Men is partially made of the movie.
Or, rather, my grandmother worked in a funeral home, and I lived with her for two summers.
You can try to watch from here, or you can go join them and experience profit.
From above, it feels enzymatic.
* * *
Where are we on/under a melancholy star? Who is holding your face? Won’t you be my
limb? And won’t you be my hand? Slap me as hard as you can. We are together, a
country of high glamour: it is merciless. Let’s share our radiation, then, and climb on top
of the machine. I don’t think you can write yourself out of this. Every letter is just another
bit of mortar falling around your feet.
* * *
How to escape? Generousness.
The love of suicide. Of what?
Long brilliant days of castration.
Imagine freedom in a tower of snails.
I am not a good men.
I am not good at men.
He won’t die! We are trapped at the bottom of a well.
A golden egg that never was.
This never was.
I can feel the language inside of me. It is moving. It is alive.
Returned as a GDP/dead whale.
Philip Sorenson is the author of two full-length collections: Of Embodies (Rescue Press, 2012) and Solar Trauma (Rescue Press, 2018). He is also the author of a shorter collection, New Recordings (Another New Calligraphy, 2018). He co-edits The Journal Petra with Olivia Cronk.