Invisible Hand Chant
Ivars Balkits

The Invisible Hand is hitchhiking out of the country.
The Invisible Hand is burying its coins in the sand of offshore Cays.
The Invisible Hand is waving to us from above the heads of its slaves.

The Invisible Hand: I can see right through it.

The Invisible Hand has left oily fingerprints at war crime scenes
in… (dot-dot-dot)
The Invisible Hand is armed and dangerous. Known for concealed-carry.
Back away from the Hand!
The Invisible Hand needs to be handcuffed and led away

The Invisible Hand, where is it hiding? In your face.
What does it want? Its morality is of numbers, worship of entities
that lack sentience, that have been awarded citizenship, that can buy
government, icons, and ideas.

Humble the Hand. Make it show what’s in its Pockets.

—

Is the Invisible Hand not there?

—

Here it is.

—

Invisible Hand Chant

The Invisible Hand has goosed us in the wallet.
The Invisible Hand has performed a sleight-of-hand with our laws and economy.
The Invisible Hand pinches our pennies while floating the currency.

The Invisible Hand closes the hospital door and opens the prison door.
Wall St.: Take responsibility for the suffering you have caused the
world and the planet. Bail out the working poor. Empathy now!
Corporations are no more people than furniture in my house.

The Invisible Hand has no face, no heart, and no morality.

The Invisible Hand is a superstition. The Invisible Hand is an
hallucination. The Invisible Hand weaves fantastic charades.

The Invisible Hand  - Ivars Balkits

Ivars Balkits has most recently had poems and prose published on the web sites for ditch, Silenced Press, Merge Poetry Journal, and Counter Example Poetics. He was recipient of a 1999 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. Ivars invites all Occupiers to add to the chant and use it at demonstration mic checks. Christopher Ridgway produced the audio recording.

In the Country
Sean Mahoney

for Larry Levis

My country greased civility.

My country embraces meme
and wraps superficial round
its skinnying shoulders.
My country cannot see straight
for it’s triggers and magazines.
And that is aspic. And tongue.
And a lark. My country lives
in detours and is no longer
ours, no longer what my love
and I invented.

At the table we weep for our country
that it may one day grow to love
itself, its characters and wilds.
Our country believes in collections
rather than birds and smoke.
Our country cannot see crumbling
streets for the buildings of neon
wrap my country’s bones in
dizzying light.

My love and I watch the foolish hand
stir the collective and change the topic.

My love and I hunch together
wondering how we lost it.

In the Country – Sean Mahoney

Sean lives with his wife, her parents, three dogs, and an Uglydoll in Santa Ana, CA. They have been there a year now. The palateras frequent their street and ring their bells. They ring their bells quite often. With the help of aspirin and water Sean recovers. Sean works in geophysics after studying literature and poetry in school. Go figure.

Dis-Orient
Luisa A. Igloria

(in response to Billy Collins’ “Orient“)

No, I will not dwell on landscapes
colored with pretty prayer flags and
dragon-decorated temples, or villages
eternally shrouded in mist, the kinds
so easily conjured in armchair travel
fantasies, because— hello, have you read
the news lately? There is a building boom
in China and the national bird is now
the construction crane. In Changsha,
they built a 30-story hotel in two weeks,
and have plans for several more. In October,
thousands of factory workers doing piece-
work on the shiny new iPhone 5 went on strike
in Zhengzhou and in Taiyuan. Around these
factories, they’ve built metal nets to catch
the bodies of would-be suicides: overworked,
undertrained, poorly paid (we know the concept
here as liability). I do not bow from the fulcrum
of my waist and my talents do not include
“cultural dancing” or being able to cut your toenails
while giving you a blow job. The sound of my voice
is not soft like a bell or like a little saxophone: it is
nothing diminutive, and my children will tell you
that years ago, when their father spent the household
money on a used car someone had conned him into buying
sight unseen, I threw pots and pans against the wall
and told him to go to hell. And yes, I have another side,
I have many sides, but they are all grounded in history,
bristling with context and all the languages in which
I dream. If you dug a hole in one of these worlds and fell
headlong into it, you would think you’d discovered
a new country; you would wonder how long it would take
before a band of beautiful, half-naked women would appear
to bear you away in a hammock and make you their king.

 Dis-Orient — Luisa Igloria

Luisa A. Igloria (http://www.luisaigloria.com ) is a poet and professor, and the author of The Saints of Streets (forthcoming from the University of Santo Tomas Press, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize), Trill & Mordent (WordTech Editions, 2005), and 8 other books.  Luisa has degrees from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was a Fulbright Fellow from 1992-1995. She teaches on the faculty of Old Dominion University, where she currently directs the MFA Creative Writing Program. Since November 20, 2010, she has been writing (at least) a poem a day at Dave Bonta’s Via Negativa site.

All That Really Happens
Joe Wenderoth

My whole family has died.
There is a song about it.
I can’t remember the sun on my skin.
Not remembering is a house.
There are no rooms in this house.
There are so many animals.
I would like to gather up one by one
the animals in my bed.
I would like to sleep with them,
in the sleep that comes after the house.
My whole family is dead.
There is a song about it.
The animals would sing the song.
Each animals thinks
about singing
and then sleeps
upon a tiny word-
colored plot of sun.
Each owes on its plot,
owes more than it could possibly pay.
This owing is all that really happens.

All That Really Happens – Joe Wenderoth

Joe Wenderoth has published books you can get pretty easily, if you have the internet and a credit card.  He teaches “creative writing” at UC Davis.

Billed as a Poetry Night against Political Repression, the November 15, 2012 Poetry in Davis reading featured Joe Wenderoth, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr. Read more about the event here.

Pretty Girl
Joe Wenderoth

Pretty Girl – Joe Wenderoth

Joe Wenderoth has published books you can get pretty easily, if you have the internet and a credit card.  He teaches “creative writing” at UC Davis. 

Billed as a Poetry Night against Political Repression, the November 15, 2012 Poetry in Davis reading featured Joe Wenderoth, Joshua Clover, and Juliana Spahr. Read more about the event here.