Philip Sorenson
from Work is Hard Vore
reborn trash,
grow the bark on your back
flowering eyes: hollyhocks, black dahlias
snakes for innards
razor your teeth
haunt the hill
of hard work
the remains of everything was a work
and is now not a work but a hazard piled high and buried or evaporated
work needs a ground for its shape
and “the body has the same basic form as a house”
the body has a family inside of it consuming the work
the family must be suppressed at times to produce
the body can go to work and ignore the secret family
and the body can sit in the little space a blocked concept
blocked from other people but also “networked” so the workplace can work linked to the next in a series of wires and waves
writing a graphite tower built from a lost/hidden/suppressed chain
summer is a time for hell
to ring the golden tone a feather
longing condensed and bareness
so many brands crowd into the summer they cower under lamination
beg the skeleton to heal or insist a doubled consumer who works who is diligent is prudent and unmakes and makes a waste
we experience “colonization of the lifeworld”
the spectacular work
eye work/ measure work
metrics
swallow infants
come into lifeworld empties it of its contents
empties the continent of disorder
that is people made delinquent
machines are introduced into the space of the body
which used to house many prairie plants was an oak savannah
the body is made literal and there is iron piled on the shore
it is a body of iron
growing in its scintillating guts
spread to the line: “[the] problem of distinguishing the boundary between inside and outside.”
the core issue of poison is the core issue of property
Philip Sorenson is the author of two full-length collections: Of Embodies (Rescue Press, 2012) and Solar Trauma (Rescue Press, 2018). A shorter handmade work, New Recordings, was released by Another New Calligraphy in 2018, but it’s now out of print. He co-edits The Journal Petra with Olivia Cronk.