Handsome Fish Offices
by Ara Shirinyan
Paperback, 68 pages
Dimensions: 5.25" x 7.25" x 0.25"
ISBN: 0-9814623-0-8
$14.00
Now Back In Print!
"While office supply products and tropical fish might at first thought seem to have nothing to do with one another, once side by side they reveal the interconnections between global acquisitions, multinational capital, and environmental destruction"—Juliana Spahr.
"Of cut-up writing, in which different textual sources are spliced together, often jarringly, William Burroughs once said, “The results will look a lot like you.” Handsome Fish Offices, Ara Shirinyan’s book of profoundly 21st century cut-ups, takes up this insight with hilarity and irreverence, showing readers how the world looks like them, and they look like the world. No matter whose language he’s playing with, the startling juxtapositions of words in these poems reveal the contemporary global condition of being incorporated and measured, invariably down to the smallest detail. “This laterally flattened species is ideal / For catalogs, direct mail, promotions, etc,” he writes, and you’ll know what he means, because your species, too—and right now—is one of the many getting flattened."—Mark Wallace
EXCERPT
Office & Habitat Under Erasure
protect and file all African Cichlids
in framing sleeve
breeding habits provide space for mouths
in hole-punched frames
allowing transparencies of
Malawian eye eaters
boulders add extra glowing frames that block presentations
providing rigidity
some employees prefer leafy plant snacks and depend upon
water, taking African stress and increasing productivity
dumped employees leave depths
they have seen sites and examined storms
found fish filled with stress relief
the great lakes of excellent hobbyist barriers
fall rapid with applications
use isolation basins and rolls of blue
dents and holds with river systems character in rare reds
female inserts folder and moves mouth
in photo filing dividers
gravel is slot punched
made of postconsumer fibers fish oppose
a color in one hanger rod with built-in
letter-sized lakes
it’s a trophy spring lake made of species imported on adhesive labels
wall holders are fully displaying signage of a very clear acrylic color
for adult attaining valuable counterspace
contents incubate the scores laid in manila
a minimum buccal area often called
made of moisture resistant pressed text
forced gusts of mouth divide filing
and care for egg material not appropriate for punching