Contingencies

of the Bourgeoisie
 CONTINGENCIES
OF THE BOURGEOISIE

GRANT MATTHEW JENKINS

BLAZEVOX[ B OOKS]
Buffalo, New York
Contingencies of the Bourgeoisie
by Grant Matthew Jenkins
Copyright © 2023

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without

the publisher’s written permission, except for brief quotations in re-
views.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza

Cover Art: Sumi-E by Masako “Koho” Yamamoto

First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-414-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022942734

BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

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The Closure of Rejection

An organizationally radiant critique, one

of the amenities that we
derive from detective fiction, or
the velocities—curves, swerves,
and across intersections we get geometrical:
a vertical
plane, upended on or
intersecting the horizontal cross—

The landscape becomes the horizon,

a card game played by an idler who is avoiding
attention to work, sizeable gaps,
interrupted terrain. The clock
is set running
off balance, heavy at the mouth
at which the word is shooting
amiable love-arrows.
When we
discover any string or bundle,
balls and rivers, they hear the
amplification (one might even say trashing)
as a taxonomist of
the lone star on the horizon
of the insufferable.

13
Isolation

works its way down the body, so

lunacy joins us and a shake
of the self-fashioned tale,

A rustle from the past,

A mere or perhaps familiar
Song she once played

Use manipulation if you must

Welcome the host-like pain
Of spirals and smirks

A wave of inflection
Through the muscle
A word, a joint of physical

Touch the keys of

Anything feeling tension
All of the legs I remember

Always a play between them

Always like you reach the souls
Always more expansion

When I hear the tone of the tune

I knew she was already here
There’s a thing about opening—

It can mean anything you want it to

Like taking space, walking, seeing
Through the movement too complex

For me, the disease inheres in health

A swell of sound can’t swamp it,
Arising on the floor, like a cordon

Between sky and breath.

14
Welcome

Discipline is the act of creating

The self in friction with the gaze
Of the Other. At the center is a
Loss barring desire, shaped by
And shaping the world of lies
In the mirror at the heart of absence
Makes it possible. Silence nurtures
Its roaring devastation, a tyranny
Of the beloved that obsesses, obsessed
By the second person who is also
Caught between being and having,
A sonnet of power and its end.
Despite this desiccated disaster,
The I can’t help but wander back, again.

15
To Advance

unending passionlessness is what

my criticals call bad
poetry anymore I don’t even want
to put the line breaks in
the DNA gets hampered by
entropy in other words aging
happens mechanisms at that level of the
quote my first memory here before
any Levinasian worldview undergirds
my high horse

running an immor(t)al
seven miles a day measures my
romantic relationships more than most
Americans fear impotence

the formula
for healing is n + 1 over two
or zero
two over zero
like a starving person in Dante’s
hell, I pretty much spent the age of 13
this December marks the end
it’s silly, really, the loss of desire
and anxiety over being anxious

I craved her like a starving

person echoing the French term
for no one is immune from the ravages
of heydays measured by different romances
the timeline of sexual maturity arcing
over an imaginary high point tips
the scales of memory braces in her face
pink with bonny-aired slippers a new lan-
guage that

16
marks the distance bridged when
defining beauty one exacerbates nostalgia
of tame blood

out of nowhere dissolution

out of somewhere a solution
out of feeling great as parts
nag fast frames
a bad idea realized by spurning

Confucius
locates in the forties uptown
hijinks live forever
your face equals face
forgotten face up
to an ethical decade

17
Through
via Erica Lewis and Erica Hunt

prey for the lonely

life light got before
scars, for punches
ability to sacrifice houses
and love poets treat you
“we are still in debt to our
obscenities”

like analogues, Jesus sex

ending shit, stairs deck
for delivery sweet type of
swallow spend spirit dark
hair bridges drowned way
beginnings only need signs of life
when sail lemonade blesses,
trying miraculous, know women
themselves people, slavery way
teaching blues some selves
just stay holy—wake up and
dry, method mercy is
want of the sex gift I receive
“we deserve neither credit
nor blame for our
ancestors”

drain aligned with late history

people the pot, let venom the soul
black – we yesterday, dark
it is not self-blood there
time everybody, bougie cotton
days own feelings it became
flood and we lord all that
wrong, big the tool robbed
never hours – this fucking

18
crops selves November’s rim
take meds, get up, learn a part
inside so wounded dry keep
ways that I, the I beyond love.
We have river drove our
sea “reciprocity is
a mutherfucking
prison”

yet truth selected leave every

sting the way so rear-
ranged timing crushed some
old inside arrows come in
expectation broke us we didn’t
forage and now secrets said
go beats so we as we be
hold everything you put
away scar or dance hawk
until we tell how to cur-
rent always tree said sees
sky is that wife some
stars

19
Alteration Finds

your derivative wall fleeing

rip-changed fear,
a deceit atwitter upon receipt,
the market unpacked
an irate vein heart
fun fans phone.
Delete the same
old agony manner,
retry resuscitation rehearsal
atmosphere attends attire—
every generation’s toxic
in treacherous acrid denial.

There is no end
except never.
Aging eyes again
mark blank executive markets
spill baby spill
beard of verbs
nouns stuck
in the hairstand
more today than
yesterday between cracks;
our nice guitar
waste words worn

in spite of the I’s eclipse.

Cents everywhere concrete,
last town content
street squat anon militia
porto-john truth squad
wishful sound movement.
Terrify empathy voice
portion sentences perhaps

20
through billionaire meningitis tongue
super sequel seeker.
Cruel hangover hour becomes the
basic plan of being.

21
Forgive My Urge to Quote Kierkegaard

As ancient as the first

human sound, calling empty
along desire—
the Beloved, the lover of being—
a redundancy, an urgency.
Not since the Middle Ages
Has such vernacular been loved
Like type O,
to love and be
loved.
Sing. To shuva, to whom I
now return. Listen and repeat:
I cannot see you from here;
that is not how the poem
works, words go out, light
comes in, as seen by the
Other, the first
person, this opportunity has
chosen me, exposed, to
confess
again fully never may
I fear, even though parts
of me feel broken, unable
to sustain or achieve honed
holiness, holy nights wholly
Out of flesh
When version re-
reverse, more neurotic than I
want to admit,
—if you fall,
you will regret it, and if you don’t,
you will
also regret regret, to live
without regret, be love, be loved,
not not no risks, what means

22
within meaning, the tenacity to hold
on, to work that lovely labor
longing never be-longed, an un-
erring exile, an unattainable
aim, aimée, yadid, ma’suq.

23
Unseen Time

You know there has always been a crush

of the unseen world upon our time-
bent plan of horse-tramped chaparral
and worn moss-rock.
Our moral coil
chafes against the animal meat of
our feet on the clay, suspicious

of the ubiquitous spirit-shadows.

Drink deeply of the spirit inherent,
Imbibe of the water from the proverbial

Stone. We all have that rock in our

blood, which was once rock, the iron
of our veins. And in each molecule,

A universe, a blade of gas spurting

from the cut in the rock, the torrid
ghosts of your ancestors, their

organic gold fueling all we do, their

fire cascading down generations, un-
remembered, unsung.
//
Each swell from
you, a swell of wind from ancestors
present even now in your cells.

They call and call. You only need.

To act.
To actualize. To see unseen.

24
The Flow

An estuary of cultures, turgid, in

the sound of golden light
eat and
listen together, break bread in
the reflection of a city
once lost

But now founded on a common space,

lingering after everyone has gone,
the change in the air,
a longing

once left, now spreading

down hairy rhizomes, tenuous
threads between
betting on dedication,
and a cachucha
in skin,
thin curl of smoke
a fire lit
in your fishbowls
full of brick and skyscrapers.

Can you hear that sound?

It’s low but steady
ready
voice rising among the chorus, a new
age—of night, open secrets,
shared sins
careful lives
A verse of human lacuna.

25
Masque

The melanin rushes, reeds

sun

burnt skin

no honey in sleep
no melody in

a new language where

u-r-e fish tailed with

pitch
above the threshold of audibility

migrates
to various parts of the body

early in embryonic life,

include the rockweeds and all kinds of kelp

a mature capable forming

earthy black insulin of copper,

black-haired Appalachian, races

through limbs, an instrument

arising from the decomposition of other

tarred and grumous stools

upon which other tan cheeks, lips, and foreheads sit

a touch of the glove

upon augitic, eruptive rocks allied to eyes

26
cut, releasing pigments
with altered blood logic
a sentimental melanoma
burning in the feet extending up the leg and even
to the thigh

reads, a verb derived from the neural crest

behind collar
bone-
colored dust powder, obtained by heating
the opposite of oboe

leading, driving
chemistry, a gilt head

a jaundiced cell, dissemination

for viewing dark

flames a complex syntax of complexion

legs and basalt,

or seed dust with life

bee

other colors, as green leaves, appear

probably identical
with be

27
D E S T I N Y‘S C H I L D
for Phil Estes

Destiny brought them

together
And Taco Bell.

Both our names

begin with E,
they said,

No shot-gunning beers
only bongs.

They even pick up

each other’s

clothes
off the floor.

Emma and Emily

don’t even like

the same kinda

boys,

Just ponies
And plasma pistols.

Who does that?

Leave me sum pizza, bitch!

Shut up,
You’re drunk.

They both suck

at video games.

28
But that’s OK.

There’s always cartoons

and porn.

29
In Vitreous

now late
the best intend

to listen and
relate a

texture to an ad-
mixture of wheels when

light strikes

fear alights
in structure a

bending of self-
sending sight

building life against

folds, a scratch on

scratch, a loose
steward of inner

nature, a wager
won and rights

lost to invite
trite trees invidious

envy and jealous second

rind around lines

dry horizons wet

sheds lattice and

30