3 poems by Bradley J. Fest
2026.05
We all know: The number that represents
us in the hyperarchive barely corresponds
to a fraction of a fraction of the ontological
complexity of a corpse let alone all us
walking-around-human-beings everywhere.
I mean we all know this. [Didn’t
someone once say that we are infinite beings
in an infinite universe?]
Anyway.] The number that represents us
to our friends and family, “to the mother
and father strolling their little ones on an afternoon,
the colleague and student trying to improve their life,
the government’s census and its taxes and wars",
that number will never—isn’t it amazing, isn’t it
at the heart of all joy, all generosity, flourishing,
everything!?—even come close to any number
we might be.*
*And so tonight, May 4–5, 2026, precisely because that number should be represented using as many different forms as reasonably possible (and still have it make sense as a project, of course), we decide that it is time for the project to change. And but so we will close out this volume maintaining our sixty-six-sonnet-and-a-preface form, but the next book will move toward Drafts-like cantos and be titled 202X–20XX: Multisonnets.
2026.07
We worshipped volcanoes in grad school. They were
versals on the page, spouts of life-giving heat, explosive,
still exploding. “My day is to my past* as ‘as my text
is to my text.’” So said the great fascistic orange haze*
clattering against my every thought’s brainpan, all that
despair inviting us to ecumenopolis* and aurulent tributaries
of light*. The past gave us tools to think about all that,
sweeping blades of sludgecore power chords from all the
distant libraries we’d pilfered*, what we were all there
to learn still somehow despite it all*. The puddling
we’d be subjected to later was of no concern because
“the wars just kept going, and they were absolutely terrible.”
This era may know no account, no rendering from which
we can witness, testify, and answer for what we’ve done.
*As boards are to Canada. Hear Boards of Canada, Inferno (London: Warp Records; Edinburgh: Music 70 WARPLP496, 2026), 2XLP.
*That draped itself around Madison Square Garden for Game 3 of the 2026 NBA Finals.
*The only way we can live above the wastelands of the future. See The Mandalorian, season 3, created by Jon Favreau (Burbank, CA: Disney+, 2023), Disney+.
*As the only conceivable alternative but will still, like, as always, be somewhere in the real of history as it continues to happen.
*The cross-country trips for media.
*Hear All, Mass Nerder (Los Angeles: Epitaph 86531-1, 1998), LP.
2026.08
But not only because no one can ever answer for
anything they’ve done, all just stranded into their
lonely neverscapes, never-nowtopias out beyond
their* families’ worst plans for their future—what
we are,
what the limits of being otherwise
could be. But also because
tomorrow is not anything today will
be: We are always otherwise, irenic jellyfish athwart
the most stalwart undulations, a lieutenancy
of multiplicity, capitulations to matter’s dumb vibrancy
every one. Lost forever before we ever arrived, departing
forever elsewhere, never arriving, always otherwise,
every time, we can never even get to where we are now.
*Generationally wealthy.
______________
Bradley J. Fest is associate professor of English and coordinator of creative writing at Hartwick College in the United States. He is the author of three volumes of poetry, The Rocking Chair (Blue Sketch, 2015), The Shape of Things (Salò, 2017), and 2013–2017: Sonnets (LJMcD Communications, 2024), More information is available at bradleyjfest.com.