Ryan Clark


from 100 Days

Day 1 Day 10 Day 45 Day 71 Day 97

Today we are word transformed. In us, reaching out through our fear among a wide day – there, the trace is freeing. If wherever hand can dig, if inch it back, get to work – an apple, an auger, a day. Wade through letters, snow, sounds, for an image: we are a recovering mountain, an unrolled people. January witness, eventual memory, dust the people become – here layer our eyes, see a way in. They forgot the name and the womb of our country, well-forgotten. O long-reaching tongue of America, resist! We will be ringing our hope as a bell in backyards, alleys, our wealth the will of our dreams. While a fool tosses a map, we support the heart, the one image. I tie us to matter, a member each, a face each, in love. Social mirrors sing for us, tie near unforeign rage from which we face some other. Show all America as a face, as one held true. In for it today, I speak of captive pictures cutting knives. One believed, tired and kind, the day is tighter, is moving in. Sign away, end us as allowed-to-heel. Wipe us worn into debt and fear, uncared, all dropped. Wish us away, maw of the dead. You are white in 2017, a lobby member read as a dad people become. The rule here is soft on you, gains you as a man nailed to a map. Dawn covered under a leaving of waste from "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN," I sit as if it were over. Sew a body tight to touch vein to vein. A wound is undone relation. We count the needs of borders enough. Now look at the shape of all of our hope in the world - it rips. Christ is not the middle finger you show in loud ire to us in need. To join the state meant a form of siding against, for him who rang the SAD alert, the one-two. A side is a shutter roughly made to add border to a way I look at the world, to wither. Say the main incentive for dragging us shoving us back. Some other you: a map of foe. I will be in view of a long sea, a wash of thought leaving my eye. I see it ruined you, the loud heave of Caesar, of Russia come unfurled, this shaking head you seal. What thought is created here: a song of riddle, of fluttering love for illegibility, of Fox and Friends. The ink I force all across the country trends as a fort: I make a mirror of rage. Mike Flynn is a hold on why this is such a nexus of wriggling loss: of story, of Russian. This is a handshake made for memes. There, a mark: claws crashing slowcaught, huge show steered. Hear the made thing wide and full. Whatever our secret, our roof is shaking lies, as Rice was. Sing of firm justice. It's on next: the chime of a worse sound tried over music. Wording where we need to read all of a lip lying further, as work is weighed in image. Fire is teething on us as wreckage you lay against the ban. Now it heats again on sanctuary, teeth hissing steam, seared. Out of fear a big country witnesses, stays fearing, knots shut both eyes, stays scared / scarring. The end is our cut away, stripped of being for a we close to each of us, unused to us. All this yuge huffing misses us as a stem. The user shorted out, sung "O Mic, grow the fire, tweet extending lines of fear toward the economy of wide eye.” A she appeared to float to an edge of view, vain shove of his eyes. The woods I need as a cut of wood, rashes of interior views, suites shocked of wood, of vantage. Take need as a cue to view our drain of unserved young, unfed children. Never shove a chop. A great teacher show knew to welcome and dress and shine a light, yet a bell dismisses a stated right. Democracy wrung a colony of any formed status, sent Puerto Rico withered as a jewell lost.

9:51 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:51 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:52 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:53 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:54 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:54 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:55 AM - 20 Jan 2017 9:58 AM - 20 Jan 2017 10:00 AM - 20 Jan 2017 10:13 AM - 20 Jan 2017 11:11 AM - 20 Jan 2017 2:32 PM - 20 Jan 2017 4:47 PM - 20 Jan 2017 6:25 PM - 20 Jan 2017 8:56 PM - 20 Jan 2017 5:00 AM - 29 Jan 2017 5:08 AM - 29 Jan 2017 7:03 AM - 29 Jan 2017 1:45 PM - 29 Jan 2017 1:49 PM - 29 Jan 2017 3:28 PM - 29 Jan 2017 3:39 PM - 29 Jan 2017 3:32 AM - 5 Mar 2017 3:40 AM - 5 Mar 2017 9:30 AM - 5 Mar 2017 4:04 AM - 31 Mar 2017 7:35 AM - 31 Mar 2017 10:28 AM - 31 Mar 2017 10:45 AM - 31 Mar 2017 11:30 AM - 31 Mar 2017 2:31 PM - 31 Mar 2017 3:20 AM - 26 Apr 2017 3:30 AM - 26 Apr 2017 3:38 AM - 26 Apr 2017 3:51 AM - 26 Apr 2017 7:53 AM - 26 Apr 2017 11:10 AM - 26 Apr 2017 1:49 PM - 26 Apr 2017 3:27 PM - 26 Apr 2017 4:06 PM - 26 Apr 2017

Author's Note: "These poems come from a longer project, “100 Days,” which is made up of homophonic translations of Donald Trump’s tweets from his first 100 days in office. Each poem is translated using a unique method of homophonic translation which relies on the re-sounding of a source text, letter by letter, according to the various possible sounds each letter is able to produce (ex: “cat” may become “ash” by silencing the ‘c’ as in “indict,” and by sounding the ’t’ as an ‘sh-‘ sound, as in “ratio”). In this way, each translation is an entirely possible reading of the text in each tweet.

"As example, the final tweet of Day 45. Trump: Thank you for the great rallies all across the country. Tremendous support. Make America Great Again!
My response: The ink I force all across the country / trends as a fort: I make a mirror of rage."

Ryan Clark writes much of his work through a unique method of homophonic translation, and he is particularly interested in how poetry responds to violence and subjugation, symbolic and otherwise. His poetry has most recently appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Found Poetry Review, Festival Writer, and Aufgabe. His first book, How I Pitched the First Curve, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press, and he is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Waldorf University.
 
 
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