What Happens, Feb–Mar 2020

Cats! natural strikers *
they live the life we dream
we might desire
if only we were bolder
insubordinate unto themselves
vectors of stoppage
in hectoring italics
you think add up
to ‘voice’ i’ve
got some demands
in that particular density
& incision of someone
chomping on an apple
across the aisle
–of not a few must one
avoid the touch
escape the sight
some all loathsome
to the taste–
hysteria of public enclosures
and the gleaning of language
as the crises conjoin
        risk in the ruins
        this telluric earth
        broken biomes
        forest fragments
        zoonotic jumps
        out streams dread
        effluvia, viral vectors
        breaking down borders,
        pathogen transfer
 
contradictions of capital
put on pause, might we learn
to live again? carbon
figures crashing hard
falsely flag
          comfortable
domestic arrangements
of the Holocene
development a busted flush
stodgy lead-times
keeping everyone aboard
the escalator, strike
down the third runway
        remind me in eight hours
        wash your hands
        cancel everything
        remind me tomorrow
        don’t ask me this again

we’ve been self-isolating
for years now anyway
in a manner of speaking
flattening the curve
‘dissembling links
between lean flows’ **
the leaning of life
in a manner of speaking
the flexible edifice
on which it sits
        hermetic shutdown
        panic at the grain store
        empty the prisons
        stay indoors, boomers
        if there weren’t
        a pandemic on
        id nut yer
 
phew just-in-time
gouging deeper
& deeper
low-key labour
flip the pyramid
of value, judgement, witness
the con of the cash-nexus
& what is needful now
the scales are weighted aright
keep your hand there
the scales fall from
my self-plagiarism
runaway yet low
-lying i take cover
in the delegate
-rich riparian zone
–“way of life”–
waders socialise losses
spaced out at intervals
–“way of life”–
social distancing by nature
shedding loads
in relative solace
­–many meander
miserably through ears
in-wind through nostrils
malign & harsh
when mortal draws breath–
i feel like we were
past that on the first email
time to take the travellator
undeveloped backward shove
thrust forward into degrowth
        oh my god!
        a hundred percent
        maybe i should become
        a cycling instructor for children
        look there needs to be a war
        on something, what’s
        our no-exit strategy now

that sociopath, Freedom,
crops up again as death-drive
­–as the death-cult’s delineations
wear through market’s
fraying masquerade–
governance by cattleprod
slow-then-fast revelation
of the hole in the floor
where the state used to be
seeing things always there
as if for the first time
(govts. often conspire
contra their people
‘and often this is
not even malice’) ***
it’s not a time for
your ideology,
separating out the sick
no body lives without
underlying conditions
the malaise seeks not
to be called by its name
        i only do this by night
        counterinsurgency
        is my day job

is this not what markets mean
by contagion? differing
modalities of stoppage
          copying the cat
cancelling everything
          but repayment
time to meet the neighbours
the re-fusing of the social
in widening apertures
of industrial action
apart from openings
for business as usual
solidary irony
of ‘what we don’t do’ ****
keeping everyone apart
in negative spaces
between bodies
keeping everyone together
& together call its name,
all at once & unplanned,
from all the balconies
of the world naming
the super-spreader naming
the source of the symptoms
        not born of nature
this virus is exchange
its very self, of course
        say something interesting
brought to the point of decision
like the last time will we
          sit around, waiting to win
things are going to look
distinct & it’s never
        too soon to blame them

Dan Eltringham is a poet and academic based between Bristol and
Sheffield (UK). His poetry and translations have appeared in a range
of journals and anthologies including Ecozona: European Journal of
Literature, Culture and Environment; Dispatches from the Poetry Wars;
Blackbox Manifold; Poetry Wales; Plumwood Mountain; and Colorado
Review. A chapbook of his translations of Alonso Quesada’s Scattered
Ways was published by Free Poetry (Boise, 2019) and his collection
Cairn Almanac was published by Hesterglock Press (Bristol, 2017).
He co-edits Girasol Press with Leire Barrera-Medrano.

* In February and March 2020, members of the UK's University and
College Union (UCU) in 74 institutions walked out for 14 days of national
strike action across British higher education, the latest industrial action
in a sustained series of strikes that since 2018 have opposed the
marketization of the sector, beginning with pension schemes and later
extending to pay equality, workload, casualization, and pay levels.

** from Natalie Joelle, ‘The Unpacking Plant: Gleaning the Lexicons of
Lean Culture’, in Thinking Veganism in Literature and Culture ed. by
Emelia Quinn & Ben Westwood (Palgrave, 2018).

*** from Ed Dorn, ‘Tribe’, Chemo Sábe (2001).

**** from Anne Boyer, ‘this virus’, Mirabilary (March 10, 2020).