a story of spec-
ificity puzzles you into
unwrapping its hidden lin-
kages, reading magazines
at fourteen like reading
Terry Pratchett, taxonomi-
es of how the world works,
from within a fog of dist-
ant insignificance build-
ing an inner city, so no-
w when reading Jacobin
about the Civil War it m-
ixes with Culture novels,
sequential text of movin-
g images seeming the same stuff
as tear gas in St Louis,
Twitter timeline an SF
neither fictive nor spec-
ulation but with no closer
relation, specific and
hyperreal; memories pers-
isting too long for word-
s anymore; interactive l-
ike a loose tooth gnawin-
g away at you, these pol-
icities policing polis,
polishing policies,
a malicious malaise
of de-democracy,
with stories our space-
ships for getting through;
are we in stasis
or in a cocoon?