Ng, Brian: ANGEL

We love this book--the generosity of its varied understandings of thought, speech, action, event, their notations, then their specific archives: "Seeing that writing is as much a physical performance / That shores time against the display of a moment / As container of thought…"

This book consists of two long pieces; the titular poem, in reference to the 1937 Ernst Lubitsch film, and "Long line, wrong line," which tesselates, snakes, and expands its way through and past "the first knuckle / or other contraption" as "a big valedictory feeling / In the lingua franca."

"Wait, they don’t love you like I love you, what / Fidelity scales logarithmically with inference time yet / Leaving no stones unturned guarantee that time is wasted, / Wait, there are words that work, and words that are put to work / Filler (“Ah, delving into this tapestry, are we,”) to minimize loss / Wait, the tragedy of slow self-fascination, picking out sake / In Industry City with arm strength as stopping criterion / Wanting spirits to enforce, and my ending is despair/ Unless relieved by prayer that the R train finally arrives / Or that the local structure of a visceral pleasure buttresses / The will to resist a broader system of devastation, sharpens / My claims on a world to come, wait, surely just participates in / Said system, I mean that a steak’s “doneness” is pure ideology"

ANGEL, Brian Ng. 31pp. 5.5" x 5.5", saddle stapled. Covers printed on Mohawk Granite Fiber coverstock, interiors printed on Mohawk natural fiber text weight paper. Risograph printing done by Cosmic Doghouse Press, "Kingston, NY." Printed and assembled in "Kingston, New York,” the unceded and occupied lands of the Haudenosaunee, Mohican, Munsee Lenape, and Schaghticoke tribes. First printing, edition of 150. Designed by The Aliens.