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This piece is about 3 printed pages long. It is copyright © Jules Boykoff and Jacket magazine 2008.
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from The Slow Motion Underneath
It was just another day in the life of just another day in the life of just another day in the life of census, ambition, sentiment, guile, of diamonds, expression, reverence, trials. It was just another day, it was just another day, it was just another day, it was just another day.
Or,
An Arrow of Geese Flapping Forward
expressions, ambitions, all sliced into slats
expressions of sentiment, the ghost of diction
retrofit the diction for expressions of ambition
a sentiment, a groundswell, the horseplay of justice
groundswells of sentiment, the pulse of expression
rhythms thickening, little fists of resistance
a pocket of pine nuts, purple pup tent for two
I still can’t tell an eagle from an osprey
but I can see water, coastline, & land
an arrow of geese flap forward toward expression
an arrow of geese flapping forward toward we
In the morning you said you felt tight about erosion. Afternoons your fists pressed the wet earth. In the evening you planted strawberries for all the neighbors, & at night you piled up questions inside.
Or,
Formidable but Fortuitous Translations in Time
the mileposts, the beekeepers, the symbols of distance
quiet spaces erased in translations of time
snapshots of memory our portals to the present
as if slats of metal crisscrossed our future
as if compression were a measurement of time
as if we knew but were too tired to speak of it
questions those questions pushed into the distance
four small fists thumped lovely in their absence
Neruda knew them as preguntas sin respuestas
be it resolved this distance within us
the distance between us, a lyric of scale
Hope is a category, an object, a toothbrush, an unmarked door, a metric of leisure, a decolonized mind. Hope is a volcano, a train platform, an island, a thumbtack, an impediment, a bombshell, an intellectual pitbull.
Or,
Hope Is a Full-Time Job
where death means death & not the end
where closer to closure means not quite there
whereas closer to closure, closer to fine
where finite closure meant death without end
where closure lived swimmingly without love in the end
whereas love in the end meant closure to that question
where closer to death meant fine thanks, fine thanks
where your moxie rocked up life without end
where death meant life on a highway without stars
where death meant life on a highway without stars
whereby whereas whereupon we must live
Jules Boykoff
Jules Boykoff is the author of “Gringostroika” (Dusie, 2007), Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge (Edge Books, 2006), and Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States (AK Press, 2007). A book he co-authored with Kaia Sand — Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space — is forthcoming from Palm Press in 2008. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he co-curates the Tangent Reading Series with Rodney Koeneke and Kaia Sand: http://www.thetangentpress.org/readings.html.