Reuben Gelley Newman
Frame Loop // Disintegration Loop
for Arthur Russell and Julius Eastman; after Peter Zummo and William Basinski
[A Tape]
William Basinski cradling an old
cassette in his hands,
hearing the easy
melody
dis-
integrate over the course
of an hour as the tape
loops on, breaking down
as if it were
a human,
its ferrite falling from the plastic
like a boy unsticking from another
boy’s chest—the magnetic
music of loss,
of longing—
[A Decade]
Hearing those Disintegration Loops, I think of you, Julius,
and you, Arthur—how your lives disintegrated,
how the decade killed you
with its American violence,
the monotone violence
of neglect, the bitter taste of racism and bigotry,
of GRID and government
and a so-called gay disease,
of being out of work
and down
on your luck in the Lower East Side,
languishing, the curses
of capitalism & cocksucking
& crack & motherfucking
Ronald Reagan,
Ed Koch defending the NYPD
from charges of police brutality
and all the bands playing
at CBGB, folk-
rock punking
the streets as the decade prospered on,
littered with the trash of drag queens
& junkies, poets & bankers,
each borough braving it
through a New York
I never knew, but here’s to you,
you sweet boys, blazing
disco & minimalism
in the last years
of your lives, so let me
postpone the elegy—it will come
soon enough—let me postpone
the el gy—it will come
soon enough—let me
postpone the e y—it will come
soon enough—let me postpone
the —it will come
soon enough—let me
postpone th it will come
soon enough—let me postpone
t t will come
soon enough—let me
post ill come
soon enough—let me
ill come
soon enough—let me
ll come
soon enough—let me
l come
soon enough—let me
come
soon enough—let me
ome
soon enough—let me
me
soon enough—let me postpone
e
soon enough—let me
[A Loop]
Peter Zummo whirring a frame loop
from the garden of his trombone,
a dazzle of drum
as your cello pirouettes
with every possible sound,
and Zummo is alive, and somewhere in New York
he sings his instrument into twists
I never knew existed, loving improv
laying louder than the city, softer than
memory—hushed, like time—
[A Composition]
One man conducting and the other man listening:
Arthur telling you to make the horns softer, then
it’s time—Aaarrrthuur, they’re waiting out there!
Julius hisses as you fiddle with your cello
one last time, and you come out, Arthur,
you raise your baton, Julius,
and the CETA Orchestra begins,
a grumpy bunch, sure, but they live
in your music, its somber
spacecraft of sound,
the opening ringing for all the world
like something out of Star Wars,
dissonant and gleaming
like the men you are,
the ghosts you will become.
[A Prayer]
And Basinski, unlike you, Julius; unlike you, Arthur;
Basinski lives on, too, somewhere in LA.
The heat shimmering over the low-
lying roofs. That silky
California heat,
not the sweaty crescendo of sun
against the Brooklyn asphalt.
Not your diva fallen
to earth, Julius,
your
supernova crash & burn & fade,
not Arthur’s drift into the salt sea,
not my metaphor, not
my nostalgia,
not even
love & ambition, or how
the city buzzes with fame
& happenstance,
the opposite
of erasure—
I’m so happy that I met you
and came to find, sings Zummo
in the cover, his articulation infinitely
clearer than Arthur’s,
even as
the world fragments
further around
us, thirty years
into this
future—
Reuben Gelley Newman (he/him) is a writer, musician, and library worker based in New York City. His poems are available or forthcoming in diode, The Fairy Tale Review, The Journal, Alien Magazine, The Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. A Content Editor at The Adroit Journal and a Co-Editor at Couplet Poetry, you can find him on Instagram and Twitter @joustingsnail.
