A tiny baby hemorrhoid in the process of being born
Various "icks" from underground lifer Opal Louis Nations
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. This week we offer a small selection from the 84-year-old Opal Louis Nations, a man who’s left strange marks (and faeces) across much of the twentieth century underground and beyond.
There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves with us. This is Fellow Travellers.
Muscle-Flasher Smith with his 6-string Brain-Jo
—1980
Les Plaisirs D’Été
All summer, Sheep’s Green and Coe Fen were pink with boys, as
naked as God made them; for bathing drawers did not exist then;
or, at least, not on Sheep’s Green. You could see the pinkness,
dancing about, quite plain, from the end of our Big Island.
Now to go up the river, the goal of all the best picnics, the boats
had to go right by the bathing places which lay on both sides of the
narrow stream. These dangerous straits were taken in silence, and
at full speed. The Gentlemen were set to the oars—in this context
one obviously thinks of them as Gentlemen—and each Lady
unfurled a parasol, and, like an ostrich, buried her head in it, and,
gazing earnestly into the silk depths, stuck out their wet tongues
and soon made noticeable damp patches in the fabric, as slowly
the sunshades spun about.
—2010The Hide-Away Man
Based on Alfred Noyes’ monotonous poem, “The Highwayman,” Part I, from which random images are withdrawn and replaced by others from The Meat Packers and Butchers Supply Company Catalog.
* * *
The hind was a hock of darkness among the meaty trees
The boning a ghostly bacon comb just tossed into the freeze
The loader a ribbon of gripstrut over the offal door
And the beef-stunner man came firing
Firing firing
The beef-stunner man came firing, over the squeegeed floor
He had schermer caps in his rubber gloves, a bunch of blanks
on his skid
A duck filled cook and baker’s coat, and bloodstained
apron bib
They fitted as well as a wash-up suit, his boots by
Goodyear Tires
And he carried a primal breaking saw
To cut and quarter up the raw
His horn-cutter sterilized once more on the end of his power wires
Over the gutters he splattered, and triggered his slaughtering gun
He grabbed the steer by the withers, confused, the animal’s head
it spun
He whistled a tune to the carcass, spread on the killing floor
Then dragged the beast to the drop spreader hooks
Valves and rail stops and drop spreader hooks
Unlike the cast iron lodestar hoists the chains and gears are for
And dark by the Johnson Hide stripper, an operator stands
Where Gus the skinner listened, his face pressed in his hands
His eyes were hollows of madness, his shroud pins strewn about
But he loved the bull stud’s daughter
Bess the old bull’s daughter
Now fifty meat patties, on a food-sharper’s route
One kiss, my bonny pattie, I’m after nutrition, I’m miffed
And I shall be back with a filmy shrink-wrap, before the
morning shift
If the foreman press me sharply, and harry me through the day
Then look for me by the grinder
The butcher-boy AA56 grinder
I’ll come for thee by the grinder, though the meat-packer bars
the way
Gus arose in his PVC apron, He scarce could reach
her shape
But he grabbed his neoprene glove from the bench, with
fingers bound up in see-thru tape
As the production line of patties came rolling down the belt
He kissed his Bess on the vacuum device
the busch pump housing, the vacuum device
Then he grabbed her tight as a vice, and bent at the
sealer he knelt
—2010Charlie’s Hemorrhoids
Gladys first suspected there was something wrong with her Charlie
when she spotted him crawling along like a sidelined bronco-buster.
Charlie’s hemorrhoids had swollen out of all proportion. There were
about half a dozen growing and looking like a bunch of grapes.
Gladys had Charlie stoop down for a closer look. That was when
she noticed the hemorrhoids had transparent window-like panels.
She peeked in one and saw a tiny baby hemorrhoid in the process
of being born surrounded by what must have been a team
of hemorrhoidal gynecologists.
Charlie was in the process of undergoing hemorrhoid replacement
therapy. What was happening to those being replaced? you may ask.
Medical researchers later found the way that birthing
specialists were able to channel the rejected, swollen tissue into the
human disposal system. “Charlie,” said Dr. Agnes Mangelthorpe,
“you are about to be the proud parent of a brand new culture
of healthy hemorrhoids.”
Gladys and Charlie celebrated over a bowl of spicy chicken tortilla
soup followed by the application of a large tube of intra-rectal ointment.
—January 2024
“Les Plaisirs D’Été” and “The Hide-Away Man” were previously collected in 2010’s Some of My Favorite Things, available to read on Opal’s website, and A Cornucopia (2012, Teksteditions).
More of Opal’s drawings, collages, and little magazines can be found here.
Brighton, UK's OPAL LOUIS NATIONS has been active in the arts since the 1960s, singing in early UK soul combo The Frays and with musicians like Alexis Korner and Ram John Holder. He has published with unfathomable prolificacy, from poetry to illustrations to music criticism (with a specialty in obscure gospel reissues). Between 1970 and 1975, Nations edited the avant-garde journal *Strange Faeces*, including works by Bob Cobbing, Alice Notley, Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Harold Norse, Larry Eigner, Kathy Acker, George Bowering, Larry Fagin and dozens more besides.
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.
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Absolutely amazing, thank you
Looking forward to going down the Opal rabbit hole!