Mike Diss
Insect Horizons
I can hardly believe I’m here
in this tiny republic made out of soap.
This is where tourists come to discover life
is the same as their life, under a partly-maintained
veneer of profit masquerading as service, only
most of them are too drunk to leave a tip
but pay too much anyway, all of the hiddens are extra.
Did you vote for our leader? Did he
acknowledge the gesture, take you riding
in a light of shredded honey under the trees
of his large, too large estate, invite you to dinner?
Were the names of the dishes unfamiliar, the food
itself banal & undercooked? Power is hollow
& can only exist in notion, pushing itself
against a resistance that obligingly pushes back:
when we cease to acknowledge the law, it has
no force. There is a law against this, too. The
alternatives are not, when they are posed
within a system that offers no choice
but itself. Inside each hotel room, a television
offers a focal point to the vagrant
attention, translates the price of this commodity
into that moral value, so that all things are interchangeable
on the market all things are, & we can sleep
abroad & dream dreams of home, as if
our home is a place we left a moment ago & can
return to at any time, without having spent
whole intermediate ages numb, transfixed by panic.
Page(s) 39
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The