"sure i betray myself "


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Issue 15: To The New

Issue 14: The Double Issue

Issue 13: Free Form

Issue 12: The Necessary Ear

Issue 11: The Necessary Eye

Issue 10: Out on a Limb

Issue 9: The Missing Body

Issue 8: The Lily

Issue 7: Passages

Issue 6: No More Tears


Bert Papenfuss-Gorek
translated by translated from the German by David Perry



home sickness

i seethe forth from my abysses
into self-respecting misery
i flew above it all it seemed
to me to be merely superficial
i need to catch a glimpse of something
to knock me down smashed to pieces
i was crazy for the world without
& now I crave admission

into the fuckall face of fate


despite all I maintain
that beyond sex & death
there must be something else
& if it's only sex or death
we must push through thisexperience
some swallow, others spit
i can tell you how you became undead
but you'll have to feed yourself

social market monarchy


now that socialism rules itself out here
with all the pressure of a creeping conscience
& with the promised landing of free markets
we'd like to sell high, high as possible

my personal sectional authorized representatives
make yourselves empresses
with all the pressure
of the promised

take it away, we say
& as far away as possible

the world flies by, see prenzlauerberg on parade


the experiment is too   object of the experiment
string-pulling! pushed    or perhaps just peddled oddities, égal
to write through the target   proceed at your own risk
our stygian advice hacks   grill fad hags
we assist with the accent  refuse emergencies & boil kohlrabi
destruction and so on   is just disruption too
parodied institutions  denied omens
the real commodity emotion   beats on poetry

betrayal


sure i betray myself   as if don't i know
all my crimes count    toward the correction of the actual
with the help of middlemen   from the camp of colleagues
collective subconsciousness   material spirits pull the wool
no cowardice excused--    disembody, heartundaunted
zip it up, zero in, call it a night    bold, cold, give up & give it up
head in the air, stiffupperlip,    teach us a lesson, punk
stand your ground like a grownup,   all ground up; jump, legend

immanuelchurchtrashmoon


i shout a lot of shit
when the sun is short
& the days nights long at last
until nothing passes nowhere by
those who would be saved, go down
the papers are unsure
the numbers don't add up
and dawn's cool beer
was brewed overnight by the moon

 

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David Perry was born 1969 in Saint Louis and currently lives in Shanghai. He is the author of one book of poems, Range Finder, (Adventures in Poetry, 2001) and two chapbooks: Knowledge Follows (Insurance, 2003) and New Years (Braincase, 2002). Recent poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in No: A Journal of the Arts, Pom2, and Sal Mimeo. He began reading the poems of Bert Papenfuss-Gorek after a summer in Berlin in 1995 and has attempted translations a number of times since.

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