Brenda Iijima is the author of Around Sea (O Books), Animate, Inanimate Aims (Litmus Press), revv. you’ll—ution (Displaced Press) and If Not Metamorphic (Ahsahta Press) as well as numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books and PP@YYL). Currently she is working on a body of work titled Some Simple Things Said by and About Humans—a chronicle of how humans have used animals as surrogates. She is also doing research on women who were murdered in North Adams during the 1970’s when she was growing up there. She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs (http://yoyolabs.com/).

Purchase Brenda's books here.

 

 

 

From UNTIMELY DEATH IS DRIVEN OUT BEYOND THE HORIZON

One day whooping miles between corpses green glow their buried
if the skin appears silky birds of the seashore congruent moistening
backlash lasting between the hills she thinks this, unborn flowers
going blooming as they fell to their deaths

falling the blooming
the swans of winter silk
on hills between dissipated
states of perceiving this landscape

bombs outside the range of nationalistic dream clouds
oozing drinking splayed his stiffened body
from a battlefield a field of indifference fast food modulate

breathtaking high decibel explosions jeeps pinned down
between mountains some meaning obscured only
then and they sped away deaths in an aftermath
choking disturbed flowers of the fallen soldier his casket

marked by the economy economies drastic refined
to be disjointed free open and lasting choked up
the fallout then blooming in winter recline
managed and networked between shifts between parties


Ripped out veins sunken deep central nervous system
swelling souls of feet edged to driveway where car parks
haul body a fallen soldier to be interned
swollen angular puffy flowers between eyes the chrysalis

free falling crisis madness opening to a pitch hot
visceral dull maniacal but dead and gone and thickening
here as today lost to the inexplicable deafening bombing land

where cars are parked backed up the hearse loud load
flag draped hunched over blackening silk on thin ice
seeing winter distance distain the endlessness
opening the body with anguish and distance craving

to fall out behind this blooming
continuum absorbed relentless merging mountains
guerilla mirage then hunger shitting one’s pants
daybreak so brilliant and cool
           
One day languid languishing incensed deliberate
Lain out amid maroon velvet cooling those eyes
Concrete machinery disabled open freeing
Meanings, deadness, a walkthrough neckline struggle


A sick question followed by a sick answer, then silence
Mourning those missing, adding cynicism to the process of death
Bombing shelling blasting: prepping for a protocol of pre-invasion
Betray again with brutalism in the lit back-face

A longer view to call the disproportion criminal
Nonstop deployment into an inner core dissolves
Maxing out the terrain and skin to go with the ticket
Make me domestic with the cultural index

Asunder ordinary there in the supermarket abject
Pants down around the ankles breathing deeply
While the meat cutter slices the thin slabs
Congealed around the vital organs

The peacocks as a symbol cannot withstand
This burden
Over and above aura and soundscape
Where warheads proliferate and we drop, causally

A cool memory of being there imagining suspension