DAY 12: MEGAN KAMINSKI, RIOT LOVE POEM

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Riot Love Poem

For Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

A riot    an order    a call in the night to say I love

you and you and you and most especially

the street and open space and our bodies

unbound by restraint and moneyed constriction

and in dreams last night you spoke of fire

of labor and building and soft nests     no armor-clad

SUVs on urban boulevards not oil money not Stoleshnikov Lane    

This morning I exhale across continents breath joined

with yours and ours and wanting more than boundaries

street lamps awakened    petals unfurling    hands opening

burn treasury burn prison burn credit burn churches

burn drones burn austerity burn banks burn office buildings

sing certainty and mass gatherings    totalities

I opened to I into we   

Now we are in Moscow now Perm now Mordovia

Now we are in Paris now Wall Street now Guantanamo

Now Atchison now Waco now Oakland

Now the avenue the bakery the café

Text springing from fingers

Language from mouths

Day 11: Carrie Lorig, Crease Crash

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Day 10: Becca Klaver, LAW OF THE RIOT

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Law of the Riot

The question of the existence of God has become a political question

Since 1845 in New York three or more people can’t wear masks unless they’re coming from a masquerade

In Russia they made the mask law this spring

This is first of all an open civil conflict with an authoritarian regime

In Russia democracy is a newborn baby

It was idiotic choreography in my opinion

But it was not blasphemy

In a sense what was criminal was the intent

This is first of all an open civil conflict

But it was not blasphemy

Some of the words were offensive to the patriarch personally

But it was not blasphemy

They were hitting an invisible enemy with their fists

Democracy is a newborn baby

But it was not blasphemy

All quotes transcribed, and sometimes repeated and reordered, from “Pussy Riot and Protest: The Future of Dissent in Putin’s Russia and Beyond,” a conversation with Pussy Riot’s Russian attorneys, NYU Law School, September 21, 2012.

Day 9: Erin Virgil, Poem for Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich

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Erin Virgil

for Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich

Far away women:

lines lead up to your lives

from the North and East,

places we find unfamiliar.

But your faces speak clearly behind the glass

where you sit poised, like queens. Koponeba.

Far too fine for a circus and a cage.

Cectpbi, they can't hold you much longer

Day 8: Elisabeth Workman, Hundreds of Half-Naked Girls in a Time of Badness

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In her Closing Statement on 8 August 2012, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova condemned the "corporate political system" for which the church is proxy and defended Pussy Riot's occupation of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior as a verdict on that system. A brilliant and extensive indictment, she invokes, among many other artists, writers, and Jesus, the OBERIU poet Alexander Vvedensky. "Pussy Riot are Vvedensky’s students and heirs," she says, "His principle of the bad rhyme is dear to us. He wrote, 'Occasionally, I think of two different rhymes, a good one and a bad one, and I always choose the bad one because it is always the right one.'" 

Day 7: Daniel Gutstein, RIOT SWAP, a poem for PUSSY RIOT

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RIOT SWAP 

There Should Be a Television Show

There should be a television show or cultural event named Riot Swap, in which the rioters from one area would trade places with the rioters from another area. Rioters in Country A, for instance, might have no experience throwing borscht, or for that matter, any soups, dips, or marinades, but as part of Riot Swap in Country B, they might have to throw borscht seeing as that’s the local custom, amongst rioters over there. “The War on Meth” should not be mistaken for “The War on Math” even as meth and math, both, are usually prosecuted in labs, and one might require the other in order for fruition (to occur). “Do the meth!” people tend to shout, when the numbers don’t add up. Do you know a guy named Stanislav who knows a guy named Stanislav when was the last time you saw Stanislav? He’s called Stanislav on account of he resembles R&B, dope, and bad dentistry, all at once. I’m thinking of Vladislav and not Stanislav am I thinking of Vladislav what the hell’s the difference between Vladislav and Stanislav except for “Who’s your daddy?” and the urge to confess. If you turn your back then you can create silhouette, or in other words, a trademark that may yield, easily, to exploitation. The tune “If I Were a Bell” can offer silhouette whereas most other ditties cannot offer much silhouette at all. The bartender wants the hipster to do her in “Putin Position.” That is, penniless, or less than penniless, like thinking about depleted Uranium. Later, the hipster (in vintage sweater) survived eye contact with a thug. Clearly, then: one minute is the new two minutes.

DAY 6: ELIZABETH TREADWELL, THE STEPHANIE THEOPHANIES

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THE STEPHANIE THEOPHANIES

ELIZABETH TREADWELL

[a poem for pussy riot]

pressed by the clouds into service

Mary theoryless like a star

in the palace of life, with rainbows,

bright & faint,

in the deserts & the oceans & the camps

theophanies, all the mary parts

giving birth to tiny gods everyday,

nursing them & dolling them up,

in the palace of life, with rainbows,

bright & faint,

in the deserts & the oceans & the camps

our goddess Thinking Woman, all our

Beloved Women, sing

amongst you too

pressed by the clouds into service

the rains the rains the rains