“Newsfeed” is William Lessard‘s  fantastically uber-modern poem from our Winter 2019 issue.

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TAKING THE 8^th AEVENUE L
to get a seat going east

 

the pride of non-migratory birds that managed to eat through winter

 

video of woman folding laundry
slowed to ten hours
—domesticity,
the new #kink

 

Pope going off-message,
suggesting dustpan
awaits us at the bottom of the steps

 

FB data profile defines me as “very liberal,”
tone of Thanksgiving uncle implied

 

acorn aggro

 

asking white people with dreadlocks “why?”

 

Benjamin using “loss of aura” as getaway car

 

empire thinks
it’s a lot better looking than it is

 

5 pizza rolls acquired (because additional 15,000 was not available)

 

hoping it will be April
sometime in May or June

 

Russian spy poisoned 50 miles south of London had been looking for a cure for his cough

 

passing away
after a brief wellness

 

Barthes pretends to talk to mother on payphone that chirps Heidegger in his ear

 

wondering what the “it” phone is
that celebrities are throwing at assistants

 

posting oasis
beneath my nose on Airbnb
promoting with photos
tiny people napping/making love
along my upper lip

 

ketchup slices shaped like cheese singles but looking like fruit leather

 

kombucha as mythical country
where everyone has great abs

 

text-based
tuna
time warp

 

hungry for a fresh semiotic
—the old categories blurred on new menu with Lilliputian font, Brobdingnagian prices

 

the defenestration of Chet

 

friend says he’s out “Herzog-ing,”
his term for walking in the desert and considering the Abyss

 

morning show for night people that begins at 1 p.m.

 

review of the Bowie show at Brooklyn Museum:
it was nice to revisit a time
when people still believed in the future

 

bed that folds
upon itself
to protect
sleepers during earthquakes

 

—Dracula’s enforced nightly entombment; the robot version

 

rows of cartoon food
in the base of the crypt;
can’t be the Apocalypse if there’s snacks

 

Tuesday
taco
Talmud

 

choosing the Chekovian
whenever someone asks “what’s wrong?”

 

FB reminds me that 5 years ago today
i was floating over the city
—arms, legs spreading
a leaf’s expanse

 

woman blames “windy day” for cocaine found in purse

 

precious bead of obsidian placed in the blowhole

 

Clarice Lispector drawing stippled line
along the horizon of her eyelid

 

line she calls her “velvet lathe”

 

man with diamond bow tie mistaking it
for one of her sentences

 

Imaginary as the punch you never threw

 

desiring-machine,
tonight lacking toilet paper

 

no palm trees in Marxism

 

theory the gaze that thinks nudity is molecular

 

Tarkovsky ordering lunch
for all the hungry tummies in The Zone

 

when the worst
thing you did today
was cream cheese

 

digging
for the person you were promised
a few layers down

 

woman on my right
burns 650 calories;
man on my left
guzzling
bright blue liquid
burns 70

 

being old means hating yourself for the right reason

 

Louise saving a seat at the center of the cage

 

meat ecology

 

spectators on the other side of the border
watch the bombings
from beach chairs

 

Toulouse
tiki
tattoo

 

woman asks “chaise longue or chaise lounge?”
—linguistic Waterloo

 

in the pig fight,
the pig
always has
the home field advantage

 

trailer for a new restoration

 

pink light
sparking

 

you will hear music until your call is answered

 

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WILLIAM LESSARD has writing that has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, American Poetry Review, Best American Experimental Writing, Hobart, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic. His visual work has been featured at MoMA PS1.