The black figure has always been a subject of entertainment in popular culture, as well as an image to sell things. In some ways, that’s how people relate to us—because they’ve seen us on television.
—
Derrick Adams
Four Poems by Albert Mobilio
Maybe it started as a joke the apparitions, the decorative / locusts no beast could resist you had to laugh
- Deana Lawson & Henry Taylor by
- Nari Ward by Lee Jaffe
- Jim O’Rourke by Jay Sanders
- David Diao by Matthew Deleget
- Rachel Rose by Aily Nash
- Tonya Foster & John Keene
- Alice Notley by Robert Dewhurst
- Annie Baker by Elianna Kan
Interviews
- Ester Partegàs by Eduardo Abaroa
- Michael Childress by Susan Jennings
- Cameron Rowland by Ian Edward Wallace
Artists on Artists
- BOMB Specific by Katherine Hubbard
BOMB Specific
- Two Poems by Tyehimba Jess
- Portfolio by Lori Ellison
- Piero by Gabriella De Ferrari
- Outline for Novel I Will One Day Be Struck Dead While Reading by Blake Butler
- The Babysitter at Rest by Jen George
- What do we want to know and how far are we willing to go to get it?: An epistolary novella by Julie Carr
- Four Poems by Albert Mobilio
- Two Poems by Jimmie Durham
First Proof
- Skinscreen: Art and Poetry at the New Museum’s Surround Audience Triennial by Alan Gilbert
- Pierre Huyghe’s Rite Passage and Human Mask by Chris Chang
- The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, Edited by Claudia Rankine, Beth Loffreda, & Max King Cap by Timothy Donnelly
- Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days by Amber Power
- Matt Freedman and Tim Spelios’s Endless Broken Time by Ander Mikalson
- Guillaume Apollinaire’s Zone: Selected Poems, translated by Ron Padgett by Dylan Furcall
- Actor, Playwright, Failure, Father, Fag—Conrad Gerhardt Strikes Again. Jeff Weiss and Richard C. Martinez’s And That’s How the Rent Gets Paid by Jim Fletcher
- Fran Ross’s Oreo by Rone Shavers
Editors Choice
Maybe it started
Maybe it started as a joke the apparitions, the decorative
locusts no beast could resist you had to laugh
didn’t you say this was a good sign brought
forth out of otherwise impenetrable noise, two bent
horns that’s spike jones at the bandstand please
raise your eyes to comprehend every creeping
thing that seems, yet seems not so flung as wind
I had to guess what my god would look like all done
up in sunday best really smart with skinny
tie & cufflinks shiny even in home movies
where you play kamikaze & only ten were left
out of thousands who began with worshipful minds
but ended up beneath the stage their grim science
just some reed they hope will tuneful lie
A nod in the right direction, the soiled bed the flooded
expectation my device is telling me cover
those tracks never give details your eyes cloaked
in discouragement how can you stand such solitude,
no haunting face to put your heart to work you
scratch, kick & bite imagine an altar that reveals
the depth to which you fall when falling
maybe
a joke
you had to laugh,
say this was
impenetrable, bent
please
comprehend every
thing as wind
my god
smart,
shiny even
where you play
with worshipful minds,
but the stage grim:
some hope
in soiled bed
my expectation—
your eyes cloaked
in solitude
haunting you
imagine an altar
falling
make electric
you can strike
the dark
well
the hymn untouched
your own warmth
you know
is required
pieces
of what was said
turn in a boy
sailing off, bound
close long after
they wave—
sounds
marked by naturalness
a child shouldn’t be,
better not be, adrift
eyes veiled,
waking
mindless:
you voice the expectation
I make electricity work
I make electricity work for you or you can just strike
matches & curse the darkness too there’s physical
effort involved in leaving well enough alone outside
the hymn of the pale sea its particles of untouched air
swarm with your own inhalations the warmth
spent quickly & you hesitate, don’t you know
how much indefiniteness is required to breathe
Puzzle pieces scattered on the floor why try solving
when only lunatics keep track of what was said or who
did that dismal turn in a boys’ club rec room waving
as if they were sailing off bound for remotest
zanzibar close-up shot of ship’s horn added long after
the extras cashed their checks they waved big bon
voyages quite bored & shuffling on the soundstage floor
The story is marked by a naturalness that’s okay to get
us started but a childish method shouldn’t be set
against a tactics of need so you’d better not be adrift
in some half-remembered dawn eyes veiled
in cigarette smoke that won’t be the waking up you’re
looking for the blood beat switched on & mindlessly
alert you hear the voice & know the expectation
Albert Mobilio’s books of poetry include Bendable Siege, The Geographics, Me with Animal Towering, and Touch Wood. A volume of short fictions, Games and Stunts, is forthcoming.
Related
The condition of most of our lives is that of continuous flight, in some manner or form—flight from faulty logic, from place of birth to the place we alight, from situations that no longer serve us, from political precarity—flight, as in rupture.
This is a story of? / a woman lying on her? / a back?—aback—with her? / a face hidden and a?
Originally published in
BOMB 133,
Fall 2015
Featuring interviews with Nari Ward, Jim O’Rourke, David Diao, Rachel Rose, Tonya Foster and John Keene, Alice Notley, Deana Lawson and Henry Taylor, Annie Baker, and more.
