This month marks the beginning of a recurring online poetry feature at Chicago Review, one we’re pleased to be inaugurating with Nikki Wallschlaeger’s tour-de-force poem “People Are Unbearably Docile.” This poem seems appropriate to its (and our) internet debut: assembling fragments, hashtags, headlines, language as meme, the unit of the tweet, mom forums, and status updates, Wallschlaeger manages the propulsive urgency of end-ad disclaimer-speak while weaponizing rhyme, which is no longer glue but shrapnel. This poem pulls back the curtain on our current echo-chamber, tosses the “fuckcake launch party” of late capitalism, makes a nasty froth in the air. Read it aloud, preferably multiple times, with friends, like we did; it lands with that sub-dom dub-con kind of sexy sting, with “malnutrition fugue feels,” with “rot” morphing into “power rock,” and “soul tunes emptying wounds.” Her “Airport Security Playlist” is a chaser that exemplifies the latter. We bring it to you live and linked, with an ongoing promise of unsupervised transport. –The Editors and Poetry Staff
People Are Unbearably Docile
Smoke the rot, sink the rot, float the rot, listing the rot. Buried in finger wavy waggy whites and colorstruck veal. Pinching latergrams and stay rot. Ferry the rot joyfully to a political bed. Mirror the rot pitch & let everything go. Sluicy patty turntable get down at a schmancy fancy blight mcdonald’s to partake in munchable corporate community outreach. Punch book of rot songs solid walk of fame shame.Tumble back the rot in sample lip drip browsers for prez Parasite Mouth gullet muscle tantrum lantern time.Terrarium the rot in sneaker groom feds and colonel data farming culottes. Decide on a change of course & lotus the rot mindfully. Secure rot in molar positivity schrapnelbag. Handy mandy candy the legal tender collaboration rot. Fairytale sparkle tooth domestic teething ring rot. Let everything crawl into my open bone poem robe rot. Sharpen my lunch out of their promissory notes rot. Don’t untie my bib until tomorrow rot. Omfg. Sirloin it. Alpha cleansing device securing the rot. In a mountain slurry. In a basic foam hotel. Scion the rot & gargle bleachy clean zoo cab stool. Carded for buying spray paint again rot. Duck. Nuture online validity straw man urgency facing something much worse rot. Flag the rot, boil the rot, test the rot. For degradation and sway. Slaying staying sold cold talent wallets rot. Sacharine jolly moomaw east side banner hill employables rot. Stain wash stinkhorn window. These iconic blitzkrieg sutures are giving me raw handled life in an enameled hearse rot. Organ rejection medicine and hasty demographical surgery. Annexed in my harvest mauled body. Milquetoast mid century curdled oyster goblet rot. Aesthete blue prop collars secreting world bank structural adjustment rot. Uninvited staph foundations mutualizing rot in grand cerebral chop table theory. Nose the rot. Stuck. Friends fidgeting from swaddling mushroom bond wand holds. Flung #maga wormbags proverbial snack attack rot. Jfc. What is suitable to wear with imperial fungus ring around my brimming dump democratic rot. Gunk from old irons still governing around superlative ankles. Peace signing your softpedal visionary war gear weapon finger at the high crush caucus hall rot. Mootsie footsie tootsie the rot. Austere milk pudding columbus riding crop on display for the hopeful glamcampers pantone arrowroot rot. Export or perish hamhash malnutrition fugue feels and electoral ballgown on the patagonia drone committee rot. Double issue paper trail goober starter pack rot. Armed wagon lyft to the slop sink brisket bank. Gooey lysol creatives post-pore clean teen dream filling out orders for competitive eagle arms petwork rot. Society is a fuckcake launch party. No relief hoping on critical mass mutiny momentum of experimental direct action intervention of a funk punk black pyromania. Thunderstruck manure shift parching. Give some illegal gas power rock. Stewing simulacra shook meat. Encouraged by hivemind repulsion in a trampoline mirror flux. Body microbacterial compassion rot. Mixing my manic xennial vulnerability with futurism high and graduation scheme low. Baked out of my ketchup stained skirt steak mind. Gun solo please rot. Feeling butter mean as hell today. Deadline it. Front page lookbook eager for a successful oligarchy thrash down. Let them eat each other. In the meantime soul tune emptying wounds rescued from the hotbox in a concentric reciprocal key…
Airport Security Playlist
1. Losing My Religion R.E.M
2. Somebody Blew Up America Amiri Baraka
3. Jonesed Wanda Coleman
4. Without a Face Rage Against the Machine
5. Crazy Nigger Julius Eastman
6. Ghetto Bird Ice Cube
7. People Are Strange The Doors
8. Everybody Knows Leonard Cohen
9. Everybody Hurts R.E.M
10. Nobody Cares Deborah Cox
11. Let’s Go Get Stoned Big Mama Thornton