Today, we are pleased to bring you a pair of poems from the latest issue of The Agriculture Reader, which encompasses The New Music, a collection of new poems from Greg Purcell, as well as a host of poetry and fiction from a number of other writers. The launch party for this issue will take place on April 18, 7 pm at Berl’s Poetry Shop, and will feature Greg Purcell, Leopoldine Core, Polly Bresnick, and Alec Niedenthal.

GREG PURCELL

HAMSTERS

Move them to the window

so they can see

the forbidding wood

with its isolate big hawks.

Wheel them into the light.

Move them by hand

out of their cages,

their pea-sized hearts

hammering your palm.

Move them to the water,

wheel them to face

their small food.

Seperate them

from their little shits,

pluck them from their

sanitary cages,

put them on rugs, on couches,

the tweed catching

in their little paws.

Situate them

on vast tabletops,

their black eyes

searching for the author

of all this senseless

beauty.

Andri Snaer Magnason

Varaáætlun

Ef heimurinn hryndi af einhverjum ástæðum þá ætlaði ég alltaf að flýja norður á Melrakkasléttu og lifa af landinu kringum eyðibýlið eins og forfeður mínir höfðu gert í þúsund ár en þá rann upp fyrir mér að í verkfærakassanum var ekkert nema 7 sexkantar sem fylgdu með IKEA húsgögnum og ef ég kæmist yfirleitt norður þá stæði ég með þessa sexkanta innan um svamlandi selinn og gaggandi mávinn og vaxandi grasið og ég myndi öskra á selinn og mávinn og grasið og læsa tönnunum í rekaviðinn og deyja hægt.

*

Plan B

If the world would collapse for some reason I always thought of fleeing north to my grandfather’s deserted farm and live off the land like he and my ancestors did for a thousand years but suddenly I realized that my toolbox only contained seven allen-keys that came with IKEA furniture and I knew that if the world would end and I made it north I would stand with these allen-keys amongst the swimming  seals and  the crying  gulls and  the growing grass and I would scream at the seals and the gulls and the grass and I would sink my teeth into the driftwood and die slowly

*

Issue six of The Agriculture Reader is out now.

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