KANGAROO COURT / "THE ECONOMY" / NO EXIT

Three brief poetic grievances by IAN MARTIN

Apr 14, 2025

Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of new or gently-used work from an artist who's earned our respect.

There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves alongside us. This is Fellow Travellers.

KANGAROO COURT

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one day i stepped into a room
that didn't want me. the arm chair
below me gave out. the rubber plant
withered from my gaze. the carpet floor
bruised beneath my feet and the wallpaper
cringed into curls. i tried to leave but the door
glared me down and i relented. i was put on trial
for my crimes. they hung me from the ceiling fan.

"THE ECONOMY"

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in the incandescent whatever
of the light above the atm
i took out 40 whatevers
and walked down the whatever
and ran to the whatever pulling over
and sat on the whatever passing whatevers
and then realized i was on the bus going to wherever
and then i got off at wherever
and walked down the whatever to wherever
and then i got to the wherever
and realized i left
40 DOLLARS
DANGLING OUTTA THE ATM
BECAUSE OF THE MEDICATION
and yet immediately i’m over it
because of the medication
or because what’s the difference between
40 dollars of drinks at the wherever
and absolutely nothing

IF I WAS IN "NO EXIT" I SIMPLY WOULD HAVE LEFT

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empty and huge as night, winter-quiet, a white room with square window sills, dark outside, listening to familiar strangers make equations of their enemies, and i am complicit, and i am their friend, brought here for nefarious purpose, their eyes cackle as i will myself to leave, but there's no door, no window and outside no car, no bus, and no roads, no home to go back to, and i've been here forever, in a snowy forest, a tree, a tree made into a chair, a chair in an empty white room, listening to the only people i've ever known say the same things over and over, and in the morning the snow in my eyes has stopped, there is a door somehow, and i leave a square brick building, and outside there is a bus, a route home, and the cackles in their eyes go away after a week, and then the rest of them goes away, and i get a job, an apartment, then another, and i write a hundred poems, and for the rest of my life i am afraid that i never left that room.

IAN MARTIN is dying. See uncensored evidence at IANMARTIN.ROCKS

IAN’s website.

Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.