Poem for Tuesday and Great Falls Views

POLITIES &/or SONNETS
By Joan Retallack
 
9 Enigmatic Quatrains / 3 Stealth Couplets

1.

the feminine subject &/or
dispossession &/or
the posthuman &/or
are(n’t) we all postracial yet? &/or

the lure of technocracy &/or
freedom to fail &/or
an imaginary racism &/or
the fanaticism of the apocalypse &/or

a biography of ordinary man &/or
the feminine subject &/or
general theory of victims &/or
intellectuals and power &/or

the insurrection of the victim &/or
classification struggles


2.

clint eastwood’s america &/or
spike lee’s america &/or
alfred hitchcock’s america &/or
steven spielberg’s america &/or

martin scorsese’s america &/or
foucault now &/or
derrida now &/or
rancière now &/or

nancy now &/or
xenofeminism &/or
narcocapitalism &/or
why philosophize? &/or

playstation dream world &/or
persons and things


3.

human dignity &/or
dream notes &/or
abstracts and brief chronicles of the time &/or
the feminine subject &/or

old women in bloom &/or
the art of freedom &/or
eve escapes &/or
zero’s neighbor &/or

philosophical introductions &/or
five approaches to communicative reason &/or
the triumph of religion &/or
networks of outrage and hope &/or

search engine society &/or
a history of silence

-------- 

"When the [Polity Books catalogue of Literary and Cultural Studies: New and Recent Titles] turned up in my mailbox, I was struck by syntactic similarities from one title to another," Retallack told Poets.org. "There was something oddly, delightfully, playful about all those declarative phrases promising so much, so baldly competing with one another." The poem felt like it went with my evening academic TV viewing.

My Monday was very quiet after my weekend, which I'm sure I needed since I practically fell asleep while waiting for photos to upload. It was a day of laundries and sweeping the deck and the kitchen and doing all the things that did not get done Saturday or Sunday. We took a walk in the late afternoon when it got a little cooler, and I did not eat a lot because I am recovering from all the restaurants of the weekend. 

We watched the pre-finale of The Republic of Sarah, then we watched the last couple of episodes of The Chair, which I found very depressing. It made me glad anew that I left academia, especially the University of Chicago, but it doesn't make me feel validated to be reminded that so many terrible situations especially for women have scarcely changed. Looking over the river from the other side of Great Falls on Saturday: