First Proof

A print project glitched by digital media.

I should say a few things / Before I begin. Hell is easy, / We brought us here / And not for the first time.

Jimmy, it’s your girl. The one at the desk whom you pay a living wage. This is what could be known as a wake-up call if we were the sort of people who relied upon others to remind us of our tasks.

Overcast cobalt, tile unbolted, pictures / On loan require empty space / Like an expletive. Grisaille pigeons, / Endemic to our swamp of / Commission.

We are street people. Nomadic by nature. We are the grandchildren of poor, adventurous strangers. Our living radicalizes their legacy.

Lying on the couch all day glass of water a highly disgusting smoothie four coloring books, / a myriad of psychiatric and “anti-inflammatory” medication / anti-inflammatory Jewish history books / anti-inflammatory pretzel sticks / anti-inflammatory medicinal cannabis 

A collaboration between B. Ingrid Olson and Kate Zambreno.

You are magnetic in the old way. / For Duchamp, the neutrality of objects / You stand in a room of your own design. / becomes a sort of anti-aesthetic

When she told N she was leaving, his response was that doing so would ruin him—financially. 

It was nearly winter, according to the sun and shadows and temperature’s plummet, when the poor girl lost her job at a greenhouse for the misdemeanor of pocketing rare plants. 

“Nothing you will see tonight is normal,” said Elihu’s mother. It was the first exciting thing she’d ever said. 

PREPARE no night creature accidental enemy / encounters return to us in witch cradles, monsters by a hairsbreadth / these our works melted no / accident these fires these crashes / capitulate to what is meant by the past as a whole / melt, fall back into accomplishment the grasp of who / prepares to give the message     

Ville Kumpulainen is a photographer living and working in Helsinki, Finland. In his new book, Out of Sight (Hatje Cantz, 2017), Kumpulainen manipulates archival images to solidify the tenuous connection between present and past, attempting to fill the gaps left between himself and his history.

Sammy Stein is a French artist and publisher. His work has been shown in institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, Printed Matter, the French Institute of Tokyo, Essential Store, as well as book fairs including the New York Art Book Fair, Tokyo Art Book Fair, Safari, and Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Angoulême.

I have let a prudent amount of time go by and now believe, or more, I am absolutely certain that your spirit will find it auspicious to be in contact with me. I am a reincarnation of a friend you had in other times. 

It was a rough road—the roughness agreeably generic, not without art: good bumps and pneumatic fakeroots, little pools of gel. Into one of these last I let myself tumble, thinking, as I fell, how I would have liked to watch the pool crackle and blaze like the fire-in-fireplace I’d been sexting without response for years. 

In An Approach, the sentence gradually evolves: word choices change subtly; phrases are introduced, transposed, or deleted; punctuation shifts and changes form. Through these shifts and disruptions, the text begins to accede to a nonlinear logic, through which we can glimpse “the unspoken, which is its subject, between the words, through the words.”

Writer and vocalist Keckler performs impersonations of obscure larger-than-life personalities he meets. In her first novel, Laing impersonates Kathy Acker.

Broken, the madrilenial butterfly finally suckles / from the dime blood at the ankle of the tube sock.

if the conditions for learning aren’t humiliation  / then I must be alone in order to be a modern / kind of student one whose failures have not made them / so anxious they are unable to be a steady archer