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An international online magazine that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.


Issue Three

  

ALEX VARTAN GUBBINS




Let's Assume the Tune as Tinkerer


Let's assume many miles to town. Let's round the curves

Let's assume it is farm & hill & church

Let's assume the cow, the fence, the graze, the tail slap

Let's assume the map is bumpy, uncoordinated, like a dumpy marking, derelict of      
                  truing the what we see & how it's done

Let's assume tuning-in to trendy radio, the guitar & twang, the rests of movement for
         moments of yield signs, of nirvana in nonsense & cadavers on tables with frogs

Let's assume the news is washed & reconnoitered with haughty guns. Let's assume
     the culture is for bullet, is for deer, is for truck & loud stereo, is for defense &
     pride for an unknown & un-aim at apocalypse

Let's assume the choir's made-up of make-up & overalls & name calling & hauling
     the weak into hallways

Let's assume the music's tune's at a volume over fists & beating, the weak's tune, the
     how inferior contests the muscle's design, the way a time has laid a context of
     bricks to build these muscles, to stack the agony, the anger that networks tools to
     maintain its house. But now

Let the tune contest the gas guzzling machines, the country republic, the source for
     domination over soil & stream, over opponents that resist the over & against, &
     against the taring

The tune will contest the fence, the order of over, direct the teachings of shoulder
     bumping, of tailgating, of abuse with stares & gossip

The tune will contest the benchmark of un-education, the de- to educate, to
degenerate                 the progress in progressive, the code in civil, of the mode in acting even, of
     allowing for the sake of allowing, an openness to open, to be felt

The tune will contest the anger's seeking, to de- the weak, to de-fund, to de-friend,
     to de-active, to de-what has been scrutinized in identifying simplicity's grip on
     violence, on the open, or the inside of domestic spaces, or of spaces when
     encounter is given an en-

The tune'll contest the random spasmodic, whether uncalculated, whether an
     expression of inconsiderate behavior, the indecency delineated only under breath,
     between he uncommons, around the side of abandoned barns & forgotten hedges

The tune'll ex- its will, the tune'll contest with will, the rising to occasion, as cryptic
     & as hidden are curbed at a will, as the outward crutch, the hinder, the speaking
     softly & slowly, the morning mourning, the less than prominent competition with
     domineering

It's the tune that contests the lack of listening, contests the speech of Winchester &
     Remington, the articulation in black powder & primers, how load & lock are
     aggressive sounds, how defend is normally fend, normalized to contend equanimity

It's the tune that doesn't pretend to tend, but does, does assess to consider, does
     address the withered petals, does obsess over composure for fellow person, for
     frequent words to kinder spirits, to dampen fear of furious, to off the charge of
     hurting, & to replace

This tune of the retreated, as not rehabilitated but habitually vertical, not fictionally
     valuable but a doer that'll re-do the system casted in sameness, in symmetry, an
     assimilation of into & divided into loneliness, unless the greater culture's taken-in
     & harnessed




Alex Vartan Gubbins was born in Chicago. He has a BA in African Languages and Literature from University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA from Northern Michigan University. His recent work has been published in Split Rock Review, The Tishman Review, Masque & Spectacle, By & By Poets, and Bird's Thumb. He taught English and Poetry in Qatar for two years (2014–2016) and is now poet-in-residence at Akos Cultural NGO in Yerevan, Armenia.






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