new from above/ground press: The Pig’s Valise, by BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP

The Pig’s Valise
BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP
$5

                                       Facing home
                                                      on and off
                                snatching a little rest
                                      before the owner gets back
                                      we see the other creatures
                   pigs and goats
                          do any of us really think
                          we’ll be turned back into sailors?

           The animal forehead
                     draped with coins
                     untrue that we know

                                          no need to know

                                                  NEVER BE THE SAILOR.

              Had something been forgotten
                                                an adjustment a turn
                                           a final step?

                               Wires crackle
                                       discharged on a word
                                    wrongly subsisting
                               the beautiful parts of the dance                 
                                                             signaled from below

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

BLUNT RESEARCH GROUP (BRG) is an anonymous collective of poets, artists, and scholars from diverse backgrounds. Its poems and essays have been published in journals such as Chicago Review, Gulf Coast, and Fence, and in books and pamphlets from Noemi Press (Lost Privilege Company, 2016) and in the Poetry Series of Wesleyan University Press (The Work-Shy, 2016, 2018)--a volume selected by Stephanie Burt in the Yale Review as one of the “Best First Books of Poetry” of 2016. Writing by BRG has also been adapted for theater production by Asher Hartman and incorporated into “States of Incarceration,” a show which traveled to museums in seventeen states in the U.S. between 2016 and 2019. Mike Davis has described the poetry of The Work-Shy as “an archaeology of humanity that should haunt us forever.”

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com