Moten - The little edges

wesleyan poetry Also by Fred Moten POETRY The Feel TrioB JenkinsHughsons TavernI ran from it and was still in it.
(with collages by Theodore Harris) Poems (with Jim Behrle) Arkansas NONFICTION In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical TraditionThe Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study
(with Stefano Harney) Fred Moten wesleyan university press | middletown, connecticut Wesleyan University Press Middletown CT 06459 www.wesleyan.edu/wespress 2015 Frederick Moten All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Designed and typeset in Fresco Plus Pro and DIN Next Pro by Eric M. Brooks Wesleyan University Press is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moten, Fred. [Poems. pages; cm (Wesleyan poetry series) ISBN 978-0-8195-7505-0 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8195-7506-7 (ebook) I. Title. Title.

PS3563.O8867A6 2014 811'.54 dc23 2014018094 5 4 3 2 1 Cover illustration: LA Haze, by filmmaker Arthur Jafa. to frequent, to gather, to solemnize in joy, to enjoy, to sing praise, to practice, to assemble in disassembly, to be quietly populous, to publish intimately, to repeat this often, to jos esteban muoz, originally of the mass.

the little edges thats what rodney asked about, can you make what we already (do you remember/how did the people) have? let it get around and get on in

ar.	complicity, in scar city, complexcity
in complicita, la.	here go a box with a lid on it.

up in here you look like cutty do. house look like he up. if so, dont you wanna go?

live, remote, preoccupied with breathing and black as machine ecology, iron man, all over the pan, all over the basin, duone, chant carry pauses and actually live inside em, gift double, to see things and say can hear them vary, pearl, from then beginning all gone inside, remember, threshold, surround her separateness with bands but if I were a bell? exhaustion makes life ever lasting. when I dance with you I am the moved mover. baby, youre a solid sender. we pound plenty, baby, softened in our program, our transubstantial fade and crossfade bodies, baby. take this and think about me in the first place. begin in the real presence of my skin, baby. you shook me! your hand is my pocket. you shook me! your hand is my pocket.

Im a pocket man. your hand is in my pocket. I fix broken rockets. you are my starship. youre all I need. precision and humility in the experiment is written on the way you customize your uniform, a ritual of lotion and stillness in the morning, fore you make it in to work on the edge of your train on the edge because youre driven to the edge in your violent correctness, over the edge of what youre listening to like somebody listening to you. you might be one. you might be someone that needs listening to. you might need somebody, too. a lot of this is found in what we have. almost all of this belongs to you. are you gon gimme some? naw, you on your way to work, little sister. thats alright, young man. bye, baby. the unspeakable tower is what they did. our shit has some names and sometimes they sound good at the bottom of it, therefore proceed against that little pill-head fucker that correct peoples pronunciation. fotrad.fotran aint really got to where we got somewhere to go, premature precepts dripped from deferred foreskins, brought out from nowhere with forecepts with no receptacle, but early on my grammar cleft my palette with okras and blues. mimi said dont listen to them blues. she knew she should because her shoe moved. she knew the man playing ray charles was ray charles. she put the jazz-cri on an early stove, cooked it down to a low gravy, (with this trade, these little fours, your dirty palette, a savory train between in blood sorbet) let it dry and made a vase out of it. we poured what was in it on our greens and blues and ochres, our loud flavors and the tree we danced around, the tree we made a movie around, against that little pill-head fucker that correct peoples predestination. fo fo fo four four four fore fore fore foe foe foe semper fe, semper fi, motherfucker, fume instead of kill. the incident in crosshatch is a burst of whispers. a mouthpiece and burred air. in need turned out to be our desire. a video of the archive in play. its some indelicate news on the wall. something in silence for everything that everybody ever wanted. cri sis for everything that ever burned inside. my babys black representational space is another world. black workers of the other world unite up in there, one named peanut the other named bush, making shit up in chance theater, which is a truck farm in exploded rows. my babys black representational space is the south dakota hills. you like the comfortable surprise of its location? see how it travels? its other than itself and it sells itself that way. whose little self are you? mine. my babys black representational space is all over the place so he got to move his body. body cut the neuro typical field with a razor in the shape of a basketball. somebody sing give me body you can hear it bounce. my babys black representational space is a black head on some black skin. in the city of the blemish on the blemish of delivery the mayors name is da mayor; but you can call her woody or few or mole in the ground or at your service. hand up to your ear (for you to find a way to sound and move, dont rhymes with roberts selmer like a plastic fuse, to blow out the emperors ambience with shouting in the theological desert of the city. you bring with you to galleries an echo of shipping, an avenue warehouse, a river bea, and the prendergast machine is discipline against an echo of shopping, too much arrangement in the head, susans sound through store-bought power. that show of shows is a bill of lading, a business pleasure, and the auctioneers nervous run is overtaken by worn shadow, homeless ware is walking, the armory is walking away, some nervous agent in the air)

Dont Rhine and Robert Sember 1.24.12/3.29.12 CAConrad, Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, M. that show of shows is a bill of lading, a business pleasure, and the auctioneers nervous run is overtaken by worn shadow, homeless ware is walking, the armory is walking away, some nervous agent in the air) Dont Rhine and Robert Sember 1.24.12/3.29.12 CAConrad, Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, M. NourbeSe Philip 4.16-20.12 laurie prendergast and Susan Jahoda (diving) 5.5.12 You are a base community Apprehend before the sound. The cargo, the brutalized openings, which also surround it, but only for a time that cant be measured, in permeance. Its an imprecision bordering on invasion to call this context, that rapturous silence, shouting, composed in listening so we discompose ourselves in one another. Lose your composure in repose, at rest, in descent, in the general murmur, a general antagonism of noise, the fugue of the absolutely poor, her gift of diving, her depressive largesse of lifting, in study, in series, her overlapped happenings of attendance, lapsed concentricities, submerged cyphers, like a bunch of little churches and ballrooms with open doors. You are the bottom We care about each other so militantly, with such softness, that we exhaust ourselves, and then record, in the resonance of our slightly opened mouths, the sound of that, in the absence of the enemy that we keep making. A disconnected movement, as if preoccupied, held already in the beautiful gathering afternoon, carried by one another as one anothers play mamas.

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