Disclosures
Jena Osman
1.
my friend said
let's go to the shadow party
into the opaque

what is a party? we think of them as complex
we think of them as ecosystems

but shadow parties are stronger
nodes of influence
multiple points of entry
an avalanche of ads

2.
somebody said
there's lots of dark money
at shadow parties
billions of dollars
let's go

I'll admit, I was surprised.
the flow of dark money
through the pipes of the party
sounded like shells in a jar
like bees in a hive

3.
I was at a dinner party
I am at a dinner party
a varied set of actors
or was it, is it, just one

at previous parties I was, I am, aware
of a varied set of actors
making bad jokes, they made bad jokes, then compromises

4.
hoping for a costume party
but instead overshadowed

parties are not stable
parties are shape shifters

enchanted by the velvet rope,
then rudely ejected, knees scraped on stone

wasn't I one of the party faithful?
didn't I know the score?

5.
sources untraceable
flowing through the system
dark money in the system
acting outside the structure

driving a truck of money
through a loophole

but hard to trace
dark money is the problem that you know
but where does the money flow?

6.
does presence matter?
the party faithful hived off
living in the hollow in-between
swallowing endorsements, making phone calls, taking polls
paid for by X
a diagram, a shadow nest
from the book A VERY LARGE ARRAY / DABA
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Some phrases in this poem come from articles by Yale law professor Heather Gerken. Similar to TV ads where politicians have to admit that they "endorse this message," Gerkin and her collaborators propose that ads funded by groups that don't want to reveal their donors must include the text, 'The ad was paid for by X, which does not disclose the identity of its donors." In The Washington Post, Gerkin wrote, "Given how much of the campaign-finance system the court has eviscerated in recent years, disclosures are becoming the only game in town."

Jena Osman on "Disclosures"
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"It wasn’t until I was rereading Bulgakov’s The Master and Marguerite (in Michael Glenny’s translation, which I prefer to the others) that I came across the very line I had translated in Yeremenko’s poem: 'I never eat when I’m drinking.' Like many Russian poems, Yeremenko’s seem to call for pages of footnotes to explain the references. Yet I find them powerful even without knowing all the allusions."

via LIT HUB
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"The qasida begins with human longing. The moderns didn’t invent it! It was in the human heart. This is the nasīb, which means 'fate,' the poet is in a nostalgic mood. Sometimes, pursuing the beloved, the poet will come upon the remains of a camp, the beloved’s caravan, causing a consideration of what has passed. If it begins with longing and its endless distances (thanks, Robert Hass), it doesn’t stay there, but rather moves into the trouble of the world." 
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