i feel their smiles on me...

mentioned in a Fader thing about similarities I pointed out re: Kerry James Marshall's A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of his Former Self and the cover art for Frank Ocean's 'Lens". of course I am a Twitter user :,)

Here's part of the epigraph of Ellison's Invisible Man, from T.S. Eliot's "The Family Reunion":

Harry: I tell you, it is not me you are looking at,
Not me you are grinning at, not me your confidential looks
Incriminate, but that other person, if person,
You thought I was: let your necrophily
Feed upon that carcase...

and then a part of the prologue, still striking !!!

... I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass.When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination -- indeed, everything and anything except me.

new links new works (and one old)

a poem of mine, "bridge failure", wound up in Rookie's poetry roundup here.

I wrote about Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. for Arena, here.

also, something old - dug up the very first music review I wrote (for Injury Reserve's Live From The Dentist Office) on the now-defunct blog (that I also ran), Phoenix Shit Talker - here.

I have a proper personal website, now, too, if you're interested: http://rina.neocities.org

cheers

my guy pretty like a girl...

I wrote an article about Frank Ocean's "Chanel" for Teen Vogue.

Numbered Scrolling Poem

the goal was to close the
gap above my head before
it's host to a slimy droning
future, talking

new flesh but much quicker,

tenser seams to pick at -
though zero light aches now &
i keep having to reconstruct
my focus around preventing

some private rampage as my body
recovers from recent history
or every variation of newness
on this timeline

anthems

They turned me loose. I told 

my commanding officer my 

story. I said that if I had to go 

out there again I'd run away. 

He said there was nothing 

he could do for me so I ran 

away again AND I'LL RUN 

AWAY AGAIN IF I HAVE 

TO GO OUT THERE. 

All evidence points to a violence

you don’t have to realize to

expect a seeing and a 

hearing at the same time

and selected minds already

made up / big     man 

how recently has

death made you sick, did 

you have to watch it happen,

fit for duty as a stranger in 

every land? Ever wonder 

who grants permission to 

leave / the divine mystery

of an exit, its process? A running 

desertion, indeed, into a black hood 

bullets  high walls, and

so on. So nobody sees. 

And your knees in the

dirt or back against the ground, 

and finding you’re still breathing,

propped up, planted, heart 

recoiling from your hand, & you 

wait for death through listening. 

They keep saying, if you don’t like it, 

go home, oh, don’t

I know?

Preference II (2017 Edition)

the question is something along
the lines of moving half a body;
checking seams in the mirror
against the wet gap

of your joints / considering the
likelihood of being a request
some day     collated features
a clean line running down & up,
insert a siren call, worried.

so the big sun drips a little light
through a closed window
& my face shifts its weight towards the floor,

shadow leaving a stain, here I am with my face
flooding against it, starting to figure it's
not quite blood that gets tainted. I tried to neglect

the word language, here, hostile
as it is, but. what ever
particular it is
suits me.