Saturday Poetry – ‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams
Saturday Poetry – ‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams
This week’s Saturday Poetry matched with mobile photography/art is entitled ‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams.
I have matched mobile art by @_klimtt with this image untitled. “I’m addicted to the Internet. I waste a lot of time self-soothing with tweets and clips. I come across a glut of ‘self-care’ online content, creators masquerading as therapists. It’s hardly possible to care for one’s self in the modern world under capitalism. The speaker of the poem is without community. She can’t make sense of her addictions, her wasteful pastimes, and her individuality in the murky ‘sameness’ of the digital village. It’s a tragicomic poem, which ends with a psychological breakdown: the speaker likens her own existence to that of a clickbait video about a goose with no feet” she explained.
If you would like to be featured in our Saturday Poetry section, please ensure you include the hashtag #theappwhisperer on any images posted to Instagram. This will mean we will be able to consider it.
To view the others we have published in this section, go here.
via Poets.org
‘Self-Care Is a Psy-Op’ by Jameka Williams
I am taking my iPhone to see my therapist.
& I’m all like See see see see listen look there was a goose
born without webbed feet I saw on Instagram & Farmer Gene
fitted Andy (that’s the goose’s name!!) with baby-sized Nikes
so Andy could walk but someone killed him anyway. The goose!
Clipped at his throat; wings severed & missing. In 1991.
Never caught who did it. I’ve been drunk about it all day.
& my therapist wants to learn more about me & I tell her
what the FBI already downloaded: In 1991, I was born
under a cloud of red, stolen feathers.
I’ve been meaning to tell you that I’m taking myself
seriously for once. I’ve learned so much since I paid
my internet bill. I quit hissing. Jasmine tea miraculously
appears in my mug where there once was rum. & now, I can
laugh, entertaining Eric with my strong strategy for the future
dystopia, in which I escape to the Minnesota lakes to harvest
milk from the last of the nation’s orphaned goats.
You & my therapist say I spend too much time online, stupefied,
with the curtains drawn & my hand down the front, clicking myself.
But you don’t understand. The metaphor being I am the goose &
I’m contemporary to some degree. God knows who in this country is
Farmer Andy. But my sense of humour is the webbed feet & the Nikes
are my Blackness & my mellow but I’m killed anyway. You say turn It off,
but It’s where everyone contemporary is having contemporary arguments
no one started. Individuality is a phenomenon for which none of our social
structures adequately prepared us. I am always a better version away from
myself. & I can realize nothing else.
Please support us
TheAppWhisperer has always had a dual mission: to promote the most talented mobile artists of the day and to support ambitious, inquisitive viewers the world over. As the years pass TheAppWhisperer has gained readers and viewers and found new venues for that exchange.
All this work thrives with the support of our community.
Please consider donating to TheAppWhisperer as this New Year commences because your support helps protect our independence and we can keep delivering the promotion of mobile artists that’s open for everyone around the world. Every contribution, however big or small, is so valuable for our future.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
