Poetry
Accordion Chamber Music
1.
like the Argo
you’ve lived like the Argo, always answering to the
same name
while others fell in love with arson and going back to
the drawing board, you’ve lived like the Argo, always
answering to the same name and continually replacing
the world piece by piece
"Life is difficult, as perhaps everyone knows by now,"
the gods may counsel. While others fell in love with
arson and going back to the drawing board, you’ve
lived like the Argo, always answering to the same name
and continually replacing the world piece by piece.
Now your hull scrapes the skirt of a new island, a
sound so slow to reach the young belles rehearsing a
new song in an old room.
2.
Model with Sword
He thinks this one is going to be titled Model with
Sword, but she knows it’s called Medea 1950.
Is it with a smile or a subtle frown that she sings a
song of lap dogs, black stockings and daggers? He
thinks this one is going to be titled Model with
Sword, but she knows it’s called Medea 1950, wiggling
the mask’s cheek deeper between her own.
3.
half a decade in a freezing tobacco storeroom
relishing a roomful of musical women is one way to
withstand half a decade in a freezing tobacco
storeroom. Years later you might even encounter their
fragrant scales for real.
On Santa Monica beach you’ve overheard a pair of
proto-surfers rehearsing lines for a film by Maya
Deren. How can you tell them that relishing a roomful
of musical women is one way to withstand half a decade
in a freezing tobacco storeroom. Years later you might
even encounter their fragrant scales for real. They’ll
be waiting for you to show them your favorite phallic
symbol, and the quickest route to the house of Miss
Anne Frank.
4.
an action open to misinterpretation
who wants to be the first one to make an action open
to misinterpretation? What about you, the virile
painter alone in a room with a half-naked, well-armed
woman?
Of course we’re following a score written by ancient
gods, but let’s pretend we don’t know that. Now, who
wants to be the first one to make an action open to
misinterpretation? What about you, the virile painter
alone in a room with a half-naked, well-armed woman?
What about you, the young cellist a little too early
to try out for a film by Eric Rohmer?
Of course one of us has to die tomorrow, collapsed in
a useless heap on Central Park West. Of course one of
us will not turn up on the list of survivors from the
shipwreck of modernity. Of course we’re following a
score written by ancient gods, but let’s pretend we
don’t know any of that. Now, who wants to be the first
one to make an action open to misinterpretation? What
about you, the virile painter alone in a room with a
half-naked, well-armed woman? What about you, the
young cellist a little too early to try out for a film
by Eric Rohmer? What about you, muscled lyricist, you,
relentless captain, you, grizzled king? A single
gesture will suffice and, as a matter of fact, it’s
all there’s time for. No more encores from those
clangorous hotel orchestras. Curtains, likewise, for
all archaic pipers. On this cold morning, chamber
music hushes the wars as a purple planet rises like
candy in a lavender sky.
Contributor
Raphael RubinsteinRaphael Rubinstein is the author of The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014) and A Geniza (Granary Books, 2015). He is currently writing a book about the Jewish-Egyptian writer Edmond Jabès. A Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art, he divides his time between Houston and New York.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

A Satisfyingly Fruitless Search: On Charlotte Prodger's SaF05
By Jaclyn BruneauDEC 19-JAN 20 | Film
Theres a subtle, syncopated rhyming of locations, movements, formats, background sounds (of bagpipes, drones, cicada mating calls, free jazz, a Jeep crossing the plain) and the contents of the artists voice itself. Her writing is closely cropped and spare, displacing an immeasurable amount of detail to subtext, invoking contact rather than actually orchestrating it.

Talking Things Through: Lucy Parker's Solidarity
By Matt TurnerSEPT 2019 | Film
With nonfiction films that deal with a political subject, form can often be a secondary concern. This is particularly true of films about activist movements, wherein the individual depicting the organization can become so embroiled in its particularities that the resulting film ends up a mere record, or worse, a recounting, a mass of information and little else.
The Regime is Female
By Alexis SpiegelNOV 2019 | Theater
Who said to kill all* the men? [*almost all] The answer to that question stays ominously unanswered in Sarah Elizabeth Grace's new play The Regime is Female, but we get a mounting sense that the eradication of nearly all the white men happened quickly, without feminist consensus and perhaps as non-intersectionally as other women's movements have been enacted historically in The United States.

We Can Defend Ourselves
By Jacob BlumenfeldJUL-AUG 2019 | Field Notes
Nina Scholz is a journalist who works for Deutschlandradio, taz, Freitag, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Analyse & Kritik, and more, with a focus on the digital economy, labor struggles, and leftist movements. Her book Nerds, Geeks and Pirates: Digital Natives in Culture and Politics, was published in 2014 by Bertz und Fischer Verlag. She is active in the Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen campaign. Jacob Blumenfeld interviewed her in Berlin.