1.my friend saidlet’s go to the shadow partyinto the opaquewhat is a party? we think of them as complexwe think of them as ecosystemsbut shadow parties are strongernodes of influencemultiple points of entryan avalanche of ads2.somebody saidthere’s lots of dark moneyat shadow partiesbillions of dollarslet’s goI’ll admit, I was surprised.the flow of dark moneythrough the pipes of the partysounded like shells in a jarlike bees in a hive3.I was at a dinner partyI am at a dinner partya varied set of actorsor was it, is it, just oneat previous parties I was, I am, awareof a varied set of actorsmaking bad jokes, they made bad jokes, then compromises4.hoping for a costume partybut instead overshadowedparties are not stableparties are shape shiftersenchanted by the velvet rope,then rudely ejected, knees scraped on stonewasn’t I one of the party faithful?didn’t I know the score?5.sources untraceableflowing through the systemdark money in the systemacting outside the structuredriving a truck of moneythrough a loopholebut hard to tracedark money is the problem that you knowbut where does the money flow?6.does presence matter?the party faithful hived offliving in the hollow in-betweenswallowing endorsements, making phone calls, taking pollspaid for by Xa diagram, a shadow nest
Disclosures
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“Disclosures” from A Very Large Array by Jena Osman.
Published by DABA in October, 2023.
Copyright © 2023 by Jena Osman.
Originally published in Poets Reading the News.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
A Very Large Array is an extensive collection of poet Jena Osman’s acclaimed work. Spanning more than thirty years, it gathers poems from her published books, as well as from journals and chapbooks long out of print. Osman’s writing is relentlessly inventive, devising countless new formats that combine elements of the poem and the experimental essay. From her deep excavations of documentary materials, including maps from nineteenth-century New York and psy-ops leaflets dropped on Afghanistan after 9/11, her poems trace overlooked visual and linguistic incidents across centuries of American history. For Osman, vision and language are closely linked: both are anatomical, cognitive, and cultural processes—processes that are enlisted, as she repeatedly demonstrates, to exploit and entrench power. When she feeds streams of “official” language—from Supreme Court opinions to the procedural chatter of Predator drone pilots—through the filter of her poetic investigations, the verbal churn that issues forth is as chilling as it is comic.
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