Jouissance
by Ann Bogle
It is indeed Russian to believe that your only intention in visiting the United States has been to break early laws. If so, how paltry they are. Russian strong men, sometimes, take their own lives, once they have gotten to American soil. The reason why is that certain so-called Russian women are architected to be sex drones. And it is she or they who score. And when strong-armed men from Russia achieve this soil, they may off themselves, after a while, BECAUSE to fuck is an incidental REASON to be here, and HERE is another WAY (Leslie Scalapino) of saying TO BE LIVING, to be extant. Orange'd you GLAD to BE extant? The Russian strong-arms who had arrived in order to visit America did so, arrived, in order to LEARN. Some of those strong bodies are the dead ones, dead of their own hand, a cause de THEM. In my apartment today, them equaled Joseph, Mother Mary, and son of God, Jesus Christ. Joseph's role and also his decision had been to report to Nazareth in order to pay his ROMAN taxes, and he brought in tow his beloved, the expectant Mary. Mary was expectant for a complex of reasons, chief of which may well be God. I love the word God, seen often hyphenated as an offering to the preference many of us may feel for Lord.
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I actually like this, though I've no idea quite why. It needs to be longer, though, by another paragraph or so.
A wonderfully provocative conceit.*
It's just the right length in my mind.
and love the title
*Read it twice with joissance. Nothing paltry here, Ann.
BECAUSE ‘AM GLAD to AVE READ this (LIK'en 2 Leslie Scalapino), gotta say IT’s a KICK in the Jouissance!
One silent reader laughed in the next room. I joined him there and asked at what had he laughed. And he said, "a cause de THEM." I said, "I laughed in rereading it where I capitalize BECAUSE, because that is how I realized it sounded like a Russian man narrating as if it were a persona poem. Poem. Here is another literary allusion in it. Cixous' "Oran je."
*, Ann.
Slight revisions tonight: 11:38 p.m. Thank you, all, readers who have commented here.