Tranquilo

Antes del paraíso tenía que bajar al norte a
ver qué había allá que tanto me tenía
puesto en los ojos los cerros informes.
Viejos trenes donde premios corrieron y
parlanchines amigos que ya no sirven
demasiado. Viejas vigas cruzaban antes de
llegar a la playa, durmientes que uno cruza
simplemente pata a pata para ver si se
puede andar de a pie donde pasa Nueva
York, Londres, Paris. Alguien seguramente
escribe en un árbol la canción para un
nuevo durmiente, pero los que escuchan
podrán saber que estamos más lejos de
saber que esta bien sentirse contento
porque ya no hay más temblores que tiñen
de gris en asfalto donde uno pisa, ni más
aspavimientos por tanto andar sin pie
suelto por calles que no tenían por qué ser
reparadas. Árboles de amor.

Felipe Ruiz (en PLAN B número uno)
"Hola Dolores,

First of all, muchas gracias for the beautiful first issue of “Plan B,” which I received yesterday. Though I haven’t had time yet to begin reading it (I’m completely swamped with work and behind in everything), I did look through it a couple of times and am excited by the variety of writing and pleased to be a part of it. I am really happy to see the work so many Mexican poets new to me, as well as the few I do know, and look forward to reading them, reading all of us, through the year. Again, many thanks for putting this all together and for thinking of including me.

Guy Bennett"
"Yo quiero mucho a plan b y siento que es mi casa, si es que la poesía puede tener una casa con ventana y amigos".

laura solórzano

hey, otro adelanto del segundo número de PLAN B, ya casi está lista!!!

Notes for Schizophrene and Chimp Haven (mixed):

I lay on the table, unable to tolerate even the lightest touch.

Deformation/stacking: a need-based architecture. A man I barely know writing in red on my thigh. I threw the pen into the garden, completely disgusted.

I want to write about sacrifice. I want to write about the loss of an intimate potential. Coffee, cream, early afternoon. Sometimes I try to think about the past, but in fact there is no factual, distant past. Here in the café it’s so volatile.

How can I link to chimps from this other, more psychotic writing? Sometimes there’s sensation when you’re kissed, and sometimes nothing at all. I am thinking of the famous experiment with the chimp in which the sexual organs are re-allocated to, say, the limbs. Then the chimp is born. So, then what is it like to touch someone? What exactly are you touching? And, when touched in a way guaranteed to produce desire, you feel numb. But when you’re asked to do something, do this, you start to feel. Story of my bloody life! I don’t have a boyfriend.

In the lab, track for effort. I go to the lab and write down the nomenclature, storing it for something else, like them, like the bio-engineers. It’s a human practice and eventually, exhausted from asking about the animal wall, the cell’s domain, I ask: What is your favorite flower? The man whose lab it is, John, says: Colombine. Is he coming on to me? He knows I’m from Colorado. I suddenly want to kiss him, but I can’t distinguish whether it’s the desire I feel for this environment or what, irrationally, I want from him.

I lay on the table and she put her hands on me, right on the middle part of me, until I stopped twitching.

In Berkeley National Laboratory’s syntech lab, I asked questions about cells. About collaboration. About failure. About cartoons. About experiments. About what makes an environment stable. About the color pink. About the jar with the orange lid. About where the problem comes in the work and how you go about approaching it. About code. About nomenclature. About effort in an experiment: how you track it. What it means to make an effort in a particular area and to not see a result. Yesterday, I met the writer Dodie Bellamy. She said: “I always have to write against structure in a kind of frenzy.” The desire I felt for the scientist I felt for her when she described a monster as “ravenous,” as a being who has to lose control of herself before she can feel. In the car, I noticed that I wanted to sleep, like literally have a nap of some kind, inside her features: her soft blonde hair, her gingko necklace, her attitude to writing, and so on. I felt the same desire I felt in the lab.

In the sanctuary, there’s a chimp. I read that though most of the chimps in Chimp Haven, a sanctuary for retired primates in Louisiana, are there for good, it’s not the case for all of them. The ones who come from U.S labs are sometimes recalled, for further experimentation. I don’t know if this is true. On March 8th, 2008, I am going to go. I am going to go there. I want to see it with my own eyes.

“Can I ask you a question about failure?” “Shoot.” “In you lab, what does it mean to fail?” “Well, it’s when the machine we intend to build doesn’t behave in the way we want it to.” “Is the body a machine?” “Yes.”

Bhanu Kapil

plan b, desde la frontera norte hasta Miyasaki, Japan

"I am excited by the nature of your project, and looking forward to reading and reflecting on Plan B, wondering if it might become a model for other bi/multi-national publication efforts.


All the best,


Hugh



Greetings from Miyazaki, Japan"

una probadita del próximo PLAN B:


The bed scattered with the stains of cutting
oils and gas-transmission turbines, the
blankets with blends of hydraulic fluid, we
lie there attempting to think our way through
economics and labor and time and biology,
me and not me at all and also not me at all.
Then me and not me at all and also not me at
all set up a schedule for soothing not really
me. There are two rotations with their own
elliptical orbits on this schedule. Me and not
really me rotate as one unit and spend one
night in the bed of not me at all and then the
next night in the bed of also not me at all.


***

In one orbit, me and not really me rotate as
one unit and spend one night in the bed of
not me at all and then the next night in the
bed of also not me at all. And then on the
other orbit, not really me is soothed on a
fixed schedule determined by days of the
week. On Monday mornings, me soothes not
really me. On Monday afternoons and
evenings, not me at all soothes not really
me. On Tuesday days, me soothes not really
me. On Tuesday evenings, also not me at all
soothes not really me. On Wednesday
mornings, me soothes not really me. On
Wednesday afternoons, not me at all soothes
not really me. On Wednesday evenings, also
not me at all soothes not really me. On
Thursday days, me soothes not really me.
On Thursday evenings, not me at all soothes
not really me. On Friday days, me soothes
not really me. On Friday evenings, not me at
all soothes not really me. On Saturday, also
not me at all soothes not really me. On
Sunday, me and not me at all and also not
me at all together sooth not really me.


Juliana Spahr
PLAN B es una revista binacional de poesía donde mes con mes (durante un año) los participantes son siempre los mismos. Compañía Frugal produce un ejemplar para cada autor y 25 ejemplares más que se venden por suscripción para costear la producción: totalmente casera (hasta este momento nos quedan 10 suscripciones disponibles). La idea es que cada mes los colaboradoress tengan acceso al "trabajo en proceso" de los otros particpantes, algo difícil de conseguir a través de los medios masivos. Y presentar a los suscriptores una revista que enmarca una época, una corriente y compromiso político (de la política que va aunada a nuestra madre tierra, no a los países, partidos o demás concepciones antinatura)
PLAN B, significa muchas cosas: un plan bi nacional, una alternativa, un segundo término. Pero desde luego PLAN B es más que una revista, es una acción de resistencia, es conversación, es la caída del muro.