Purebred Ambient
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"Purebred Ambient" is a poem from a longer series entitled "Long Secrets in Air" which examines accumulation, the poetry-industrial complex, our current sociopolitical climate, and the fraught legibility that the neoliberal project both "offers" and demands of its subjects under the guise of freedom.
This video was shot by my partner Eric Vitale in the backyard of my parents' home in Bethlehem, New York, the first day of sun after a week-long stretch of May rain. Throughout the first two years of the pandemic, I stayed in this backyard in a tent when visiting my parents. Throughout the years, it has changed quite a bit. The rotting tire swing next to me has been one of the only constants.
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Ryan Skrabalak is a poet and laborer from so-called upstate New York currently living in Kansas with his dog, Donkey. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Blazing Stadium, DREGINALD, The Poetry Project, NOMATERIALISM, queer.archive.work, and Bedfellows Magazine, among others. He is the author of several chapbooks of poetry, the latest of which are forthcoming from swallow::tale press and FIRST LAST. He runs the poetry micropress Spiral Editions and is currently an instructor and poetry MFA candidate at the University of Kansas.