Like being a woman or proximate to milk
Two Hannah Regel poems that clip clop and a brief reminder that there is a Lohan Beach Club Mykonos for all of us
Hannah Regel’s first poetry collection, Oliver Reed, came out during the middle of last year’s most rancid moment, when recklessness and remorse seemed to be the only two emotional planes available to most of us. Perhaps because of this predisposition at time of first encounter, there seems to be an similar yo-yoing in the poems, maudlin abandon succeeding finger-licking naughtiness as we follow the aptly named protagonist, Sorry, across a horse-studded world. The collection’s namesake is fittingly British cinema’s Babycham rascal, Oliver Reed, perhaps best known for playing Bill Sikes in the 1968 film version of Oliver! and Proximo in The Gladiator. In the notes that accompany the collection Hannah talks about a New York Times interview with Lindsay Lohan from 2018 entitled, You Can’t Hurt Lindsay Lohan Now, as an important source of inspiration for the collection. When asked why, Hannah told me that it was because, “Lindsay is like the female contemporary of Oliver Reed: a person who misbehaves publicly and who is goaded on by a public who find that misbehaviour titillating, often against their best interests.” Toke on that.
You can buy Oliver Reed from Montez Press here.
And in case you missed it, Lugubriations was listed in Elephant Magazine’s Essential Guide To The 20 Best Culture Newsletters last month. He’s a good boy . RA.
In the line of the bright sun and her trusty red baseball hat, the unicorn women rejoin their friends, a waiter carries a tray, topless women cater to the sunset crowd, cocaine inked into his abs with the word “RUSSIA”. A recycled clip from a 2011 film plays on a continuous loop, the summer of her 30th birthday goes on forever. Herself, in a red swimsuit. The image a person, she gets in and out of cars, betrays no trace of a European accent: I think the time arises, I think the time arises when a woman must be put out to work.
To experience what being a woman really is we degrade ourselves through work.
To experience what evil really is we degrade ourselves through work.
This is the alchemy.
We hoovered up human remains. Stole the houses birds live in.
Suffered in the outposts like saints; impervious to law, nature and consequence.
Food had no bearing on our bodies.
A Big Mac held in the future of a void.
We had no civic responsibility, only that of destruction: reinforcing subjugation, refusing cooperation, enhancing contempt.
Destruction is a civic responsibility.
It’s like I’ve always said:
if someone ever asks you to do something for them, do it really badly so you never have to do it again.
Like being a woman
or proximate to milk.
We spill it, after Sorrow.
Herding the cows, milking the cows, bottling the milk, washing the barn, filling up the troughs.
An unsuccessful barbecue.
You know, among young men the ones who turn out to be great talkers are the ones that get fucked the most.
You know, among young women the ones who turn out to be great talkers are the ones that fuck the most.
Kill the language. Kill it.
Get the shovel. We’re making a belt.
I am old enough now to be my own mother
I travel to hell with her in a shoe
(echoing unendingly)
Clip clop, clip clop, clip clop