Still Dirty: Poems 2009-2015

Born of a rigorous criticism of the toxicity of the economic system, this collection of experimental, socially conscious poetry reflects a world in crisis. It mobilizes scenes of struggle and instances of solidarity, from Occupy to Mexico’s drug war, from Cairo to Athens. Linguistically daring, full of exigency, these poems are as damaged as life, still dirty.

an excerpt

Back at the neon red debrief nobody said much.

“We crossed this Burmese river” or

“The Punjab is a land with five rivers.”

I drank from a glass of beer and remembered

the Alexander Kluge VHS

The Eiffel Tower, King Kong, and the White Woman.

The wind was blowing down trees;

at the port of Long Beach,

a Mitsubishi crane un-stacked

a glow-blue sheet of wind.

I’ve been rolling around with a bunch of Fleetwood Macks.

We are the crisis.

David Lau has been involved in the poetry, art, and activist communities of Los Angeles and the Bay Area for the past decade. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and editor of the journal Lana Turner. This is his second book after Virgil and the Mountain Cat: Poems (University of California Press, 2009).