The Front

By K. Silem Mohammad

Poetry. Kenny Goldsmith said that "K. Silem Mohammad is the Andy Warhol of contemporary poetry, acutely scraping the bottom of the cultural barrel with such prescience, precision, and sensitivity that we are forced to reevaluate the nature of the language engulfing us. Our first impulse is to flee, to deny its worth, to turn away from it, to write it off as a big joke; but as with Warhol's car crashes or electric chairs, we are equally entranced, entertained, and repulsed: we can't stop looking. This is important and beautiful work, but not in the way we've come to expect. It's a double-edged sword that Mohammad is holding against our necks, forcing us to look at ourselves in the blade's reflection with equal doses of swooning narcissism and white-knuckled fear."  Bob Perelman understands Kasey's work through the chance operations with which he derives his vocabulary: "Of those infinite monkeys chained to those infinite typewriters, which one actually came up with King Lear? At first it looks like one of those conundrums that'll never be solved. But with K. Silem Mohammad's THE FRONT we catch a glimpse of a method that just might move us in a fruitful direction. First, take all the language on the web—it's not infinity, but it's what we've got for the moment—then stand exposed to those howling social gales. If you want to know what it feels like to lose sovereignty, go to THE FRONT." K. Silem Mohammad is the author of THE FRONT (Roof Books, 2009) BREATHALYZER (Edge Books, 2008), A THOUSAND DEVILS (Combo Books, 2004), and Deer Head Nation (Tougher Disguises, 2003). He edits the poetry magazine Abraham Lincoln and teaches literature and creative writing at Southern Oregon University. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roof Books
• Release date: Oct 15, 2009
• ISBN: 9781931824354

Book preview

THE FRONT

THE FRONT

K. SILEM MOHAMMAD

ROOF BOOKS

NEW YORK

Copyright © 2009 by K. Silem Mohammad

ISBN: 978-1-931824-35-4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2009935394

for Michael Magee

Notes & Acknowledgements

Every poem in this collection accurately reflects the author’s actual values, beliefs, and personal experiences. Every poem in this collection was composed entirely out of Google search engine text. The author has taken many liberties with selection, punctuation, spelling, recombination, and so forth.

Some of these poems first appeared, in various forms, in the following print and online publications: 1111, Cannibal, CSUSM Community and World Literature Series, dANDelion, Dusie, Exchange Values, Eyewear, Fold Appropriate Text, Hot Metal Bridge, Jerk Ethics, la petite zine, Lana Turner, Letterbox, Locuspoint, Mary, Milk, nthposition, Past Simple, Phoebe, Ping Pong, PFS Post, Poetry, Rain Fade, Rock Heals, Shampoo, Sorry for Snake, String of Small Machines, Succour, Tight, Tool a Magazine, and Wildlife. Gene Kelly first appeared in a chapbook anthology entitled Meat, published by Hot Whiskey Press in 2006. Artist’s Statement was printed on a program for readings by the author and Lyn Hejinian at The New Reading Series at 21 Grand in Oakland, California, on March 30, 2008. The author is grateful to all concerned.

This book was made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

Roof Books are distributed by Small Press Distribution

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Berkeley, CA. 94710-1403

Phone orders: 800-869-7553

www.spdbooks.org

Roof Books are published by Segue Foundation

300 Bowery

New York, NY 10012

seguefoundation.com

CONTENTS

Artist’s Statement

MySpace Is Creepy

Words

The Front

Rocking the Sprint Campus

The Economy

The Game

Our Three-Pound Brains

Chicks Don’t Actually Dig War

The Romanticism

Dutch Sound

Amy Winehouse

John Dryden

Crappy Langpo Wallpaper

Hello Strangler

The King

Squirting Ringworm Taco

Straight-Up Alpha-Chicking Becomes Electra

Frosty the Prostitute

On Earth

My Culture

America

Fuck the World

Normal Modes

Animal Girl

Coldplay Johnny Carson Dog Rescue

Materia

Landscape, Weather, and Consciousness

The American Poetry Review

White

Dirty

The Second Most Horrible Place I Ever Lived

Anal Camry Is Getting Me Down

Doggie Fox

How Pigs Can Win the War

How Songbirds Deal with Large Amounts of Serial Information

Hot Story

1975

Bourgeois Heart

The Passage of Time in Orange County

Missing Out on Heaven

Metaphors

Sign Me Up for Rented Space on Your Houseboat

Fly Like an Eagle

Greek Chaos

It Ain’t Easy

Funnel Whore

I’m Tired of Eating Lunch with Chicks Everyday (Signature, Event, Roast Beef)

Rudolph Fucks the Baloney Off My Nose

Picasso

Why I Am Not a Forest Ranger

Der Explosion

The Bowl of Lucky Charms Project

Cavemen

Modern Love

Hard Lovin’ Anne Frank

Heavy Horses

Dear Police Officer

Men

Write Like a Beaver

Gene Kelly

Untitled

No, My Name Is Gary Sullivan, I Own a Mansion and a Yacht

Happiness Is

Poems About Trees

A Walrus Doing a Duck

Yankee Doodle Fuck Machine

I was forced to eat your average American

Like Decorations in a Wigger Cemetery

Necronomicon

Blank Verse

Total Elephant Molestation

The Mohawk Lumber Company

Complications

As I Walked Out

Unspace

Against Sasquatch

Organic/Ultra-Organic

A Cloud in Haggar Slacks

Sioux Formlessness

Dusty the Oncologist

When the house is on fire

good girls have to get out

as well as the bad ones.

—J. P. Morgan

Artist’s Statement

All you retards deserve to burn in hell. I would like to see you get crushed by a motherfucking bulldozer.

Go fuck your syphilis-infected mother. Take your motherfucking ass and cry to your fucking pedophile slut. Go finish killing yourselves, you little pussy fucking liberals. Get it through your head: your government doesn’t give a fuck about you.

We have to get behind the president in wartime my fucking ass. Think wisely because the motherfucker can’t keep most his life. In 1987 he stomped his mother to death to the tune of kids running around screaming BALL HAIR FUCK PENIS. Fuck me harder bitch and lie to me are examples. It is just a stupid concept and really needs to be syndicated immediately.

My father and mother have recently been arrested for growing and selling a stickman Apollo Creed who makes cups of tea without fucking your wife first. Continue groping as her Washington Monument slips. The split is clean and the two halves fit nicely into the mother mold. She had a big ass then, she’s got a big ass now.

To the farmhouse, fuckboys! Prepare to have your ass laminated yet safe sex and overall self-fulfillment. Two men show up claiming to be poets. Are you my Caucasian? My mama buys me the motherfucking undies. Fuck these old bitches, my sister barked, just because her mother’s gone nuts.

I’m glad you like mocking Christians because they really blow heavy ass. We’re gonna speak up through this art form because it’s fucking powerful. Thank you. I would like to see you get crushed by a bulldozer.

MySpace Is Creepy

So I have determined that MySpace is creepy.

You may ask how I have determined this.

Well I will tell you.

I’m finding that people I’ve never met know who I am.

Even I’ve been trotted in to make inflated friend.

What did they really expect to happen?

I’m an awesome guy who lives and resides in Stockholm, Sweden.

I am the most reliable person I