Air Base as Steven Seagal Action Scene [3]
by Ryan Clark
Image: “i Become This Malformation” by Brett Stout
1. The first thing is violence, of course, a violence to threaten the arrival of violence
a violence in return. Transatlantic relationships are shared pacts of violence—
such is the logic kept in tanks among the forged city, field of slabs.
7. Both in the earth and on the earth a weapon greets us as we wake stretching the
extents of our touching. In the morning the ocean looks as if it would burn you up
on contact.
10. Suppose a war made us strong. Would it transform an abandoned runway, take
off the science of fear as a boom large enough and many to hold us inside.
11. The science is encouraging. That is what we are given not to question yet with a
view towards solution. How else is a mission to stand for eighty years as a base.
Here is the fist that encouraged the continuation of efforts to reach a common
technical understanding based on technical facts because it is our fist that is
logical and not the next fist.
12. It is acknowledged that our fist saved the day and other fists are evil and cruel.
All the beautiful women want to kiss us for this and it tells a better story of results.
13. There is a crowd to see our fists fly through the air in formation. Students and
retirees grin in the fuel-vapor-drawn dawn as they watch their desire take shape
in our terrible choreography.
16. They know it is derivative but they like the fantasy.
18. The scene does not end, it only turns over—remade—should health conditions
permit.
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[3] Homophonic translation of excerpts from the 44th Portugal-U.S. Standing Bilateral Commission report
Ryan Clark is a documentary poet who writes his poems using a unique method of homophonic translation. He is the author of Arizona SB 1070: An Act (Downstate Legacies) and How I Pitched the First Curve (Lit Fest Press), as well as the chapbook Suppose / a Presence (Action, Spectacle). His poetry has appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, Interim, The Offing, and Cherry Tree. He earned his MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University as well as a PhD in English Studies from Illinois State University. He now lives in North Carolina, where he teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Brett Stout is an artist and writer originally from Atlanta, Georgia. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. His work has appeared in a vast range of diverse media, such as art and literature publications by NYU and Penn.