Peter Gizzi's the Outernationale opens with a really beautiful "if." Was trying all day to find passage from hypnosis book that was offering advice for people have trouble starting writing that suggested beginning each sentence with "if" because it generates. Might not own this book anymore because couldn't find it. Poem, "A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me" begins: "If today and today I am calling aloud / If I break into pieces of glitter on asphalt bits of sun, the din..."

Katherine McKittrick's "I Entered the Lists... Diaspora Catalogues: The List, The Unbearable Territory, and Tormented Chronologies" in latest XCP, no. 17.

from "That Country" in Sorry, Tree, Eileen Myles...

I wanted
to fuck up this
language & blame
its nameless
homeland:
the victors got drunk
they came & came
the words were never
the same again
in the last century
it came to us
to speak American
which means
to speak
where you land
which means
nothing now.
Not proud
but invasive.
Nor the language
not the place
not them
not us
neither an island
not a continent
not a world
a spin without
a home.
An edgy
feeling. A coin
on its
side speaking up