The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Olive Blackburn's "Communism is up there and we are down here but it is happening now"

taking an axe to everything we might have known
about ourselves
blotting our own eyes

come quick
we managed to push through
and be damned, the portal is open

In other major cities, violent acts are singular
and isolated
The violence in L has become collective and focused
But the primary conditions are the same
As soon as the kids figure that out, we’re in trouble

the consummation of the party will be its demise

This selection comes from Olive Blackburn’s book Communism is up there and we are down here but it is happening now, available from Timeless, Infinite Light. Purchase your copy here!

Olive Blackburn is a dancer, writer, and communist from Northern California. She is a doctoral candidate at UCLA in dance history. She lives between Oakland and Los Angeles. http://timelessinfinitelight.com/pages/oliveblackburn

T.A. Noonan is the author of several books and chapbooks, most recently The Midway Iterations (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2015), Fall (Lucky Bastard Press, 2015), and The Ep[is]odes: a reformulation of Horace (Noctuary Press, 2016). Her work has appeared in Reunion: The Dallas Review, Menacing Hedge, LIT, West Wind Review, Ninth Letter, Phoebe, and others. A weightlifter, artist, teacher, priestess, and all-around woman of action, she is the Vice President and Associate Editor of Sundress Publications.