ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

  
TWO POEMS
by Louis Armand


Meat Sciences (Appliqué)
in history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life
—karl marx

the same thing, but more clearly more
immediately, without the "distance" of construction?-closer to the
bone: the puzzle
would nevertheless remain

obstinately full of holes, the image shot point blank—a white
membrane, the act of
skinning & of pieces of flesh clinging to the
skin: a "falsely" contorted

topographical relief, like a bloated abdomen, the surface
stretched to a point of trans-
parency, revealing
the inner bone meal / resonant, parasitical forms (this occurs most

often in zones of acute spoilation), viz. "foreign bodies"
suspended in photo-
graphic emulsion: to investigate their behaviour, & to extract from that
a more compulsive set of ingredients




threshole

the stabbing beams of the multiple points of light produce not the
beauty of sublimation but a
formless "pulsation" of desire—something, almost un-

speakable: dropping the veil of
inscrutability—they are working against yet another

avatar of the vertical (the truth is, in the
system of the fetish, that
it is the preterite form which is symbolically castrated): an operation

of suturing which is also a kind of luminous dispersal—a "whole" body
from the outlines of which

something is missing—an eviscerated, cosmetic
& artificial construction, that despite our closest attentions
"fails" to materialise

Louis Armand poetry, essays, translations and short prose have appeared in numerous journals internationally, including Sulfur, Meanjin, Heat, Frank, Poetry Ireland, Poetry Review and Stand, as well as in the literary anthologies Infernal Cinders (Kangaroo, 1993), The Zone (UNEASA, 1994), Calyx: 30 Contemporary Australian Poets (Sydney: Paper Bark Press, 2000) and Catalyst (Cambridge: Salt, 2001). Publications include Seances (Prague: Twisted Spoon Press, 1998), The Viconian Paramour (New York: x-poezie, 1998), Anatomy Lessons (x-poezie, 1999), Erosions (Sydney: Vagabond Press, 1999), Synopticon (with John Kinsella: Mudlark, 2000), Base Materialism (x-poezie, 2001), Land Partition (Melbourne: Textbase, 2001), Inexorable Weather (Lancs., UK: Arc Publications, forthcoming 2001) and The Garden (Salt Publishing, 2001). In 1997 he was awarded the Penola Festival's Max Harris Prize for Poetry (Adelaide), and recently he was awarded the Nassau Review Prize for 2000 (New York). Since 1994 he has lived and worked in Prague, in the Czech Republic, where he currently lectures on literary theory & art history in the Philosophy Faculty of Charles University, Prague. He is the editor of a literary broadsheet, Semtext (Plastic), a member of the editorial board of Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge and Strange Attractions, and poetry editor of The Prague Revue.