inside the mind a box and inside the box
a word and inside the word several letters
and inside the letters sounds and inside
the sounds a bird call and inside the call
a shadow and inside the shadow a voice
and inside the voice a name and inside
the name a trace and inside the trace a
grassblade and inside the blade a color
and inside red there is blood and inside
blood there is a stream and inside river
there are murmurs and inside the echo
a hand and in the palm another hand
and it pulls you downward and beneath
the downward there is breath there are
choruses there are four walls there are
acoustics there are waves and geometries
there are figures on the wall and lanterns
outside there is a wind at the door then
the eye opens and there is a chasm and
inside the chasm there is a mirror and
in the mirror there are murmurations
and inside murmuration there are star-
lings and in the starling there is mind
and inside the mind the body again &
and then the organs and then the box
0
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“0” from Black Box Syndrome: by Jose-Luis Moctezuma.
Published by Omnidawn in December, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Jose-Luis Moctezuma.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a Xicano poet, professor, and researcher. He is the author of two books of poetry: Place-Discipline (selected by Myung Mi Kim as the winner of the 2017 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize) and Black Box Syndrome, both published by Omnidawn. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
Jose-Luis Moctezuma’s Black Box Syndrome is a series of poems—or “black boxes”—based on black hexagrams in the I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination text. Following the aleatoric tradition popularized by the surrealists and extended by the work of John Cage and Jackson Maclow, these poems cast their lenses on the hazards of the incessant financialization of everyday life. Synthesizing chance-operational aesthetics with Aztec anatomical science, conspiracy theory with systems theory, and the black box model with the concept of the “influencing machine,” Black Box Syndrome explores tensions between lyric excess and digital compaction in the age of pandemic. Over and against the corrosive world-shrinking effects of Wall Street risk management and futures trading, the black boxes in this book propose a counter-divination that distorts, deranges, and decolonizes the logic of empire.
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