Poems by Ali Alizadeh

Letter to Adam Smith
 
A simple question: what’s diachronous
 
in desire? Precisely nothing. The problem
I’m having, have always been having
 
re: this crisis (from the Greek krisis
meaning judgment): no missing link
 
in these manacles. Who wouldn’t want
a millionaire? I want to be an addict
 
truly. Activate endorphins on demand
and supply of cash and commodity
 
but I can’t. Sadly. The fantasmatic
is too harmonious. Could you love me
 
if I were only lovable? Subtraction
leads to attraction. Capitalism
 
is full (of its own shit). My verdict
is harsh, historically inevitable
 
boredom. Yours sinisterly …

Sympathy
 
I feel for you
 
-r antipathy. She’s been removed
from her child to raise another’s
 
, gracefully. Mao’s mistake: contradiction
alone empowers the State. You
 
’re so miserable, entitled
to my empathy. They’ve asked her
 
to sleep on the floor of their son’s room
, kindly. Robespierre
 
’s logical fallacy: emancipation
transcends virtue/terror. I’ve got it
 
so damn good I can spare you
my apathy. She cooks, cleans, washes
 
her face after remembering her child
, impeccably. Lenin
 
’s misplaced optimism: Revolution
can’t be reduced to a Party. I’m so sorry
 
Capitalism keeps winning; there, there
, I have my sympathy.

Us & Apes
after John Docker
 
The origins of violence
 
tease thy clitoris, Clytemnestra
with an immense affection
 
unlike Agamemnon. Tanzania
’s chimps, adept genocidists
 
outdo the desperados of Hellas
inside flanks and fetlocks. Mythic
 
incompetence feeds vengeance
and Andromache’s boy, thrown off the walls
 
of the condemned city. Primatology
presages mythology. Agamemnon’s cock
 
-iness post-Troy, thine
to deplore, o portentous queen
 
and may thee treat Cassandra better
than Gombe’s finest apes
 
exterminating the outcasts
in the name of evolution, for our sake.