from 'golden infection' // Laura Goldstein

there's only one exception to war, and that's capitalism. watching the weary costumers, their

efforts positively reinforced from all sides, and then i lost the thread. better wages? possibly, but

then you lose to the revolutionary void. who am i to say? sitting here while you stand for 12

hours, still. each network's dendrites eventually caught in some neutral reliance on the

individual, a living thread. listening for some stale synonym for some other body we'd rather fill,

lest we be all the way dead.

*

yeah, that line is a lie. war is essential to capitalism, not an exception, but i often get a line in my

head that's obviously a lie and i have to write it down & then later expose it. this is something

i've always tended towards. my process right now is to write a new section and then type up an

older section into and have my transcription/editing process be influenced by my current

writing. This kind of reminds me of how a person works, too. I have a dream that reprocesses an

old memory and then I wake up and start my day.

*

every time i go home i get some sort of infection that reminds me to pay closer attention to

words like "infection" and "home". where and what are these places in the heart and head? what

is "heart" and what is "head"? i make meaning out of the world around me, but i also make my

own world with my own meanings, concentrating sometimes on "meaning" and "world" as if to

stay active and present makes a body that seems to be real to others in that it evokes reaction

into a person that's me, for what that's worth, sometimes that's worth everything one can give in

exchange to what other worlds request

*

The quiet in the morning

The consistency of questions

The questionable core of confidence

The seclusion of one’s own concepts

The star burst of society

The seclusion of certain collectivities

The turning into ever, the terrifying, the tenor

The stupid system’s corners

The streaming rights

The outdated regulations

The mutated manifesto

The constant measuring of perspective

The increasing irrelevance of paintings

The false sense of security, the false security

The long overdue litmus test

The languishing mass of pinecones, lichen and grass

The love we come back to, the love that eludes us, the past

The love that eludes us, the love we come back to, the rest

//

Laura Goldstein's first collection of poetry, loaded arc, was released by Trembling Pillow Press in 2013 and her second collection, awesome camera was published by Make Now Press in 2014. She has published several chapbooks as well as numerous poems and essays in magazines in print and online. She currently teaches at Loyola University and is the co-curator of the Red Rover Reading Series.