Andrea Abi-Karam

ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

and two other poems

ATTENTION! ATTENTION!

imagine the possibility of a nonlinear interaction::

thank u all for your attention its been a beautiful evening and now id like to move on to the portion of the evening where we all step outside into the office park and fuck each other limitlessly, consensually of course, / it’s leo season i know / you’re here to party so those of you who are currently detached from your skin i invite you to arrive together at the office park across the street and to engage in whatever acts maybe be pleasurable for you or your number of future partners all of whom are sitting in this room with you this is how we take things in to our own hands—we’re unsatisfied—the world has let us down & don’t worry everything will be recorded: feral play àpower play and um yes my assistant over here will roll out a cart full of accessories for your engagements with each other and if there is an accessory you can’t find, well maybe someone else is using it or maybe it wasn’t requested but just let one of us know and we’ll see what we can do. For an emergency: there’s a 24 hour babeland (dial 9-1-1) not too far from here that’s still open. anyways let’s talk about surfaces. there’s the sharp metal edges. ah . yes. there’s the grass the edge of suburban bourgeois meets suppressed primal or perhaps beauty seeking. there’s the cement sidewalk, yes, the cement sidewalks. i urge you to engage these surfaces as a new form of skin something that you’re directly attaching to there maybe be little bits of this second skin embedded in your first skin after you leave here. this is how we form & store memories. soap won’t erase the memory, just the visual trace. some other surfaces: chain link, yes this one i urge you to consider i find it versatile & porous unlike our borders lots of opportunity for suspension. in the post industrial pastoral / rough edges are hot / briefly

BROADCAST SHOULD LAST APPROX::: ∞

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TO THE DHARMA BRO WHO TOLD ME TO CUT MY READING IN HALF SO HE COULD JUMP ON THE BILL TWO MINUTES BEFORE THE READING:

LOL I DIDN’T LEAVE THE PRIDE PARTY AT THE STUD EARLY TO FLY TO FUCKING BOULDER WHILE ROLLING & STILL BLOODY FROM THE ORGY (DID I MENTION ROLLING THRU TSA ACTUALLY MADE IT LESS SCARY?) IN ORDER TO BE CONDESCENDED TO BY YR NASTY BEARDED FACE W/HOLE. BUT DON’T WORRY THE NEXT TIME U STEP UP TO THE MIC I’LL UP THE VOLTAGE IN THE SOUND SYSTEM SO SHOCKS JUMP FROM THE MIC TO YR LIPS & WATCH THEM PEEL OFF IN STRIPS.

YOU’LL COUGH UP DEADY BABY MICE. ONE BY ONE. & BY THEN IT’LL BE CLEAR THAT THIS IS NOT A PERFORMANCE PIECE.

BUT DON’T WORRY, I WON’T BE THERE IRL B/C I DON’T GO TO ALL WHITE READINGS.

I’LL BE SURE TO LIVE STREAM THE GOOD PARTS ;)

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LEAVE YR MONEY WHEN U DIE

at  9 am i wake

at 4 am i wake

to answer a question from last night

face in the bathroom mirror pre-paste

i rinse the face & begin to take care of the design

look a dealer in the eye

tomorrow i am going to approach

rain tonight

& i will wait for

an edge & bury the lead

i walk towards the door

of the tiny doll house

& try to open it from the inside / out

when the knob turns my wrist snaps &

each window shatters

the paper corners sharp &

recycled

has such a way of summing things up

legless, careless

what’s that saying that states

the map on the bottom of your feet

while walking on eggshells

in the phone case of fiction

well the case is the floor of & house is a dollhouse

you are way too big to be in here

try not to breathe lightning

i google myself every few months

a check in to see what made the list

on the first page

i hover the cursor over the images tab &

sink my middle finger in to the pad

there a little clicks inside my virtual self

i lost a leg, i lost an eye

there i find my old poetry bios,

former bodies, nascent beliefs,

former contained selves

& that i don’t look very good in

orange

but that’s just a design on the outside

that filters in

all in a grid all these people who

definitely do not have my last name

it is transparent pasted up there

all stitched together

where’s the bank with no cameras

s did that Anti-Surveillance Feminist Hair & Makeup Party

we were all scared of the city centralizing information

putting it all in one place

rote assembly

i let s redesign my face

temporarily & go to the bar

& i look great with silver or gold makeup

a reflective, outside

& the rage of capture

& i prefer to put it off

inside, reflected

w was was the first person who said to me

that she could see the insides rotting

she said core the apple before it accelerates

or actually it probably doesn’t matter what u do

i insist there’s not enough economic desire

& what about the accelerant?

so won’t you try?

maybe if we share all our tiny tragedies

pass them around in passing

we’ll approach a place of

texting each other back

no direct speech allowed

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Questions for the author:

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What are 2 - 3 books (regardless of genre) that you've read over the last year or less that really blew your hair back?

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramović, Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña edited and translated by Rosa Alcalá, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan edited by Ellis Martin & Zach Ozma

Who is someone you admire who does work that you feel really benefits your “local” community, and what kind of work is it that they do?

My friend Jo Valdes aka @tell_you_what who ceaselessly books DIY shows bringing queers, freaks + friends together in an utterly participatory way!

The one thing in your writing routine you couldn’t live without:

Strong Coffee.

What were you like in high school?

Desperate to move to the city.

What is something that nearly everyone looks silly doing?

Scrolling while walking up the stairs of the subway.