3 Poems
by Ben Fama

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RIP

I don’t want to

be on an island

without celebrity

or flirt

sea like a mirror

I don’t know

If I’ll make my link

It’s basically Monday

I think on the island

yesterday a horse died

right there at the party

and the girl was so sad

with a braid in her hair

her birthday is Getty Images

I show her some

I don’t know

how it is

beneath the sand

it’s sad

to know so little

like this island

it’s perfect

to wave your nudity

from the end

you find something

send it to print

it’s totally fine

like the potion

if it’s good

you breathe it in

I have

Sandy missed the link

I said it’s ok

I mean whatever

I start feeling bad

and walk to a new location

and look through magazines

until I’m ready

to respond

I’m not too famous for it

It’s just this reputation

around the island

I have nothing

you know that

I could kill

you told me

everyone agreed

at the party

I wasn’t there

Sandy was

sort of waiting

in curls alone

there was a singer

slow and elegant

she texted me

I couldn’t respond

I was in public

I had no thoughts

other than people

uglier than me

getting fucked

at that moment

I’m not afraid

Of falling in love

Some die

Claire did

I thought

I saw her today

in the metro

my heart went crazy







Boo



When a stereo goes by playing Mary J Blige Real Love

That’s when the revolution begins.

The whole boatload of sensitive bullshit

When I lost my virginity I was thinking about

Wednesday Addams, from the Addams family

No one probably ever called her boo, that’s sad

My boss keeps saying ICP to someone on the phone

Indian summer sun falls inside my perfect soda

Filmmaker Kenneth Anger … not in the one 1%?

Jeff Koons? My friends are in this band called Damien Hearst

I love reality but there’s no money in it—I wrote that cause its true

This is 2011

The year Amy Winehouse died of a broken heart

And Four Loko became illegal

Twin Peaks began streaming on Netflix

also my cat died

One of the first images of utopia I saw was the MTV video for Today

by the Smashing Pumpkins. It’s inconclusive whether the bread truck

they drive around is running on vegetable oil, though the whole video

is basically a depiction of the art-as-play narrative post-modernity rescued through Nietzsche,

or Adorno’s impossible-but-necessary image of liberation

that he said society needed to move forward

If Snooki was my daughter, I would not be proud of her

Let me give you a second to tweet that

When I die I want my ashes scattered into the waterfall

from Twin Peaks. The hotel is called The Salish.

I’ve left the details with Lisa because I trust her to deal with this

in a way so as not to profane grace. That sounds like something

Larry Levis might have written. Larry Levis died in Virginia, age 44,

where I was born. When I was 25 I was going to move to Portland

to join this bike gang I read about online. Also I thought my ‘zine

could really thrive there. Lisa lives in Portland and has a more

sophisticated phone than even I do. All phones are basically smart

because they continue to function while I am ridiculous.

When I’m terrible, that’s when Lisa’s cool. It’s 85 degrees today in October

a Sunday, much hotter than Fall felt in the catalog

A day after Christopher gave the eulogy at his mother’s funeral

which I forgot about. I only remember because I called him

for something to stupid to write and he was about to get on a bus upstate to go there

Later I saw a picture he posted of this lake–seemingly endless

The sky looked golden brown and pink

A gradient of makeup like you could see at the ballet

I don’t know what to say

Of the works and women I loved

when I knew less

Some I still do

There’s not much I believe in

Things I can be present inside

A sample sale

What's new for Fall?

Maybe “sample sale” is the best phrase, not “cellar door”

Which is supposed to be phonoaesthetically perfect

The sharp “a” in the sample sale breaks the space

Making possible the capitalist entrance

Into this otherwise innocent moment

I’m aware I am using the rhetoric of Christianity

To attack an economic philosophy

Where is Feminism now?

Feminism is so fucked right now

I want Rei Kawakubo to be my mother

That eternal black pitch

As if the clustered cedilla hanging from Comme de Garcons

(it looks like an asterisk or an asshole)

Is the black hole, or degree zero of all thought

wherefrom passes the structure

of avant garde capitalism and its concomitant critique