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Poetry by Aderet Fishbane

Epic of gilgamesh

Three bitches emerge from sleek turf entirely naked,

with irrelevant genitals: unborn, promotional, green.

Green gonads?!

The press is up in arms, the story so prickly & pheremonally tense

the only logical path forward is a Creative Commons license

casual & cool.


There is no specific legal limit to the re/creation of the bitches’ birth.

Anyone can repersonate them

so long as the project is a transformational one.


My parents & a third set up a mystical seance in Massachusetts

wear earth tones, burn eyelashes & fingernail clippings, & are re-

born out of that synthetic oil they put in your car

for an extra 20 big ones.


They film the whole ordeal & upload it to The Web,

where it is hailed as a daring reference to the birth(s)

of the green-gonaded bitches.

Copyright law is not a problem

since their re-birth is only referential

& since the bitches have lived on creative common ground for a while now.


Later, I am born jaundiced &

the question arises whether my birth is or is not part of the performance.

Everyone wonders: if the irrelevant genitals become relevant by discoloration, isn’t that totally a reference to the bitches?

Everyone wonders: isn’t this getting a little too explicit to be transformational?

Online, everyone takes sides about whether copyright law is black or white

in light of this new performative offering.


My parents’ third posts a photo of two jacked arms & an open palm.

Everyone takes this as a sign of his divine triumph over licensing law.

The courts contend he is entitled

to one-half of my earthly body for commercial use & my parents can have everything else.

The public has endowed me with subscription dollars, so when I come of age I will be rich enough to promote my transformational beginning, beginning the media cycle again.

In an unexpected twist, the green bitches post their own photos: pics of their genitals, genitals born again.

Licensing renewed, The Web touching itself, my parents & their third retreat to Massachusetts to talk creative strategy.

A lot of people are dead & we just can’t figure out what killed them

Hauntingly I still revere the teenage boy,

his smiley consistency & tummy so well kept


Also relevant: the weird murder of a girly salesman,

her wares an ugly internet fetish, a good earth-song,

& a cartoon obsession


Full-heartedly, my mother is become angel of death

& wants to kill &/or maim thousands, especially

British teenagers in earnest love with one another


She’s passing around cardstock decorated with abstractly emoting angels:

It’s time for all of us to identify with the angels.

It’s time to reflect. It’s time to feel communally.

It’s time to become angel of emphasis, of eggy dining, of failing inclination,

of refrigerated problem.


It’s funny, my mother is atomically murdering everyone

But she’s been dead since the emergence of gay culture

(the shock of the thing killed her in 2007).


At the open door, everyone wants to know when

reverence met & melded with teen infatuation.

Everyone wants to know when Feeling was relegated to the internet.

I try to tell them:

it was when when my mother handed me the angel of Short Skirt & Long Jacket card;

It was when the teenagers committed erotic suicide instead of saying, we’re sorry.

Aderet Fishbane

IG: @nonfungibleclit

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