PREMISES 1-10
Ripley Soprano
The following is an excerpt from Ripley Soprano’s Premises chapbook, which will be released as a double-sided poster along with a soundscape audio recording (preview here). A free plain text format of the book will be available upon release for screen readers, etc.
Readers can also look forward to a chapbook launch party on Monday, August 5th beginning 7:00 PM at 444 Club in Bushwick, with additional readings by Rachel Rabbit White, Che Gossett, Sophia Giovannitti and Zaina Alsous, and soundscapes by DJ No Intimate.
Ripley Soprano (@kylejennersagoraphobia) is like, bump up the compression on the news reporter announcing the end of the world on their final live broadcast and we'll be ready to post this thing.
1
i hate all the people who are mean to my friends for refusing to be a good ally in favor of real healing
they take a sip of my wine
our broken lineages
there is no going back
times change with the discourse i guess
four years ago someone told me theyd rather march w the black liberals than the black bloc
despite being a cynic i still fuck w an anarchist over an ally any day
i cast my mind back to filling out my green card application: have you ever belonged to the communist party or another insurgent group
anarchists used to travel the world assassinating fascists and now we have a global passport system
its almost as if someone is orchestrating all of this
2
our feet hang off the end of the bed
he doesnt know the story of lilith
as he reaches for the phone to call room service
i tell him that she was kicked out of the garden
because she refused to lie beneath adam
he asks “why was he so fragile?”
i say “two tops cant love each other”
3
you can hide a lot of things but you cannot hide your priorities
this bitch is so fake
i saw that from a mile away
4
dont get it twisted / plastic surgery is self determination / my heroes have always been junkies / a good cop is a dead cop / no more back door shit bc im a little spoon top and am emotionally available JSYK / poppers for all under fully automated luxury communism
5
when u ask the cards if they are serious and they say YUP
6
my pussy tastes like dead cops
7
My friend, who just had major surgery on their leg,
asks if they can stay over with me at my mom’s apartment
so they can easily get to physical therapy in the morning.
“Let’s watch a bunch of realistic dystopian movies.”
We torrent Snowpiercer
and sit on my childhood bed scrolling through Instagram
on our phones looking at memes made by kids probably sitting in the same position as us,
holding their phones like their only friends.
We barely look up at the film.
The screens all blur together.
I feel dizzy, and start to doze off.
I over hear them talking to their mom on the phone
about the new administration and her open immigration case
as I slip into sleep.
When I wake up in the middle of the night to take my meds,
I feel dissociated and distant,
I want to wrap my arm around my friend
but I reach for my phone instead.
8
In the morning, I wake up to a Signal message on a thread that I set up to coordinate care for a friend who is in crisis. Someone agrees to go with them to therapy this week. Everybody I know takes care of someone else, but not themselves.
I’m on the toilet and the cat brushes by my leg. The first skin-to-skin contact I’ve had in months.
9
“he likes his blanket this specific way above and tucked around his ears.”
She’s visiting her dad who is dying
After suffering multiple strokes over the course of the past five years
he still points to the hospital wristband
“can you get this thing off me?”
My mom relays this all to me, imitating his frog-like croak, or maybe it’s her voice cracking
I don’t know
In my head, I’m like,
he’s gonna croak
I stare at the ceiling, the position I spend 80 percent of my time in
he’s told her much too much for an old man to tell his youngest daughter
even though she’s not so young anymore
stories of lighting the fireplaces of widows in his neighborhood
and then having sex with them
he confuses my mother for one of her older sisters
and sometimes a nurse, and she plays along.
Getting angry at somebody with dementia is about as helpful as,
I don’t know,
something not very helpful.
I wonder what it’s like to have enough memories of your dad to care about
the way he likes to be tucked in
pour one out
10
For the first time in years I fall asleep with my phone off.
I wake up to mad messages from a couple of friends having
panic attacks in the middle of the night, like “Call me I need a hug.”
I’m realizing more and more that keeping my phone on and picking
up every single time might be the most radical thing I can do these days.