freeform hollerin’ at the Lit conference (in syllabics)
1.
No. We don’t want you to breathe in – then out.
No need to stand up, stretch out, twirl your wrists.
Most assuredly, no incantations
Are being asked of you, not a single word.
Know what, Jack, Jill? Scrap the four directions.
Your identities and ours beside yours
On a coatrack at the door, quite comfy
How much whacking can your piñata take?
Yes, you stand on stolen land, you may now
Zounds! Methinks my station merits the ploy
Which, under these conditions, is public
Though you’re planted on private property.
We do acknowledge that: the conditions
The one thousand directions not to take
At this after after party, we call
Anarcho-Tyranny Über Alles
Or, simply, The Finance Oligarchy.
Please be modest, slithering on the ground
Scooping up treats, subtracting from the whole
Our allotments of failed Liberal Schemes
Coming into view as we splinter up.
2.
Who won the prize? The prize among prizes.
A prize of a prize, you might say, a win
Over one more prize – to win – a prize, won.
Surprise! There’s no prize for that. Or for this.
Piñata sticks swung blindly all at once
Is more to the point, bloody point, hobbling
Stumbling onto the arena of Kultur
But what’s at a distance tracking it all?
Or, in close: poetics as detainee
Marks it a fugitive – in mind, and gut.
We were just about to jump outta here
As the smoking debris began to cool
Before the dawn of more Centrist Hokum.
But here we are, herding piss-poor students
Into the bare halls of Career Poet.
There’s exactly five things a prize can do:
One: it bestowith wings to wingless works
Two: it stauncheth today’s systemic wounds
Three: perchance it payeth the rent – golly
Four: it groweth wings on the fugitive
Five: it clipith the fugitive’s new wings
3.
Strategies recalibrating tactics
Kind of works. Kind of what might not – is you.
Games abound this side of the barricades
One of them is Self™, as designed by “you”
But here’s another piñata at hand
Popped out from nowhere, perplexing, tempting.
Fellow insurrectionists, lend an ear
Identity thinking stalls <hard reset>
And bullhorn this – all night long, publicly:
Old Universalisms pen us in
Where we mean to run with a New Story.
New Stories, reject Catastrophizing
Refuse a forgone Tragicomedy
Stage an Alternative Futurity
Identity thinking stalls <hard reset>
Blindfolded, Homo Americanus
Grab this trusty stick, grip it mightily
Raise it high – and on the downswing – crack it.
Now the bards scramble, now the bards bag up
Scraps of self, whose purpose – they know not what
Though it’s arousing, all this newfound pep.
—
Rodrigo Toscano is a poet and essayist based in New Orleans. He is the author of ten books of poetry. His latest book is The Charm & The Dread (Fence Books, 2022). His previous books include In Range, Explosion Rocks Springfield, Deck of Deeds, Collapsible Poetics Theater (a National Poetry Series selection), To Leveling Swerve, Platform, Partisans, and The Disparities. His poetry has appeared in over 20 anthologies, including Best American Poetry and Best American Experimental Poetry (BAX). Toscano has received a New York State Fellowship in Poetry. He won the Edwin Markham 2019 prize for poetry. He works for the Labor Institute in conjunction with the United Steelworkers, the National Institute for Environmental Health Science, National Day Laborers Organizing Network educational / training projects that involve environmental and labor justice culture transformation.