Louis Armand appeared in Issue 36 with Preparations for Winter and Watching Cut Flowers Die. The two poems move through cold weather, rooms, objects, boredom, memory, machines, and the uneasy pressure of ordinary survival.
Louis Armand in the historical archive
Issue 36 published the pair amid a wide field of contemporary and experimental writing. Armand’s contribution keeps its scale close to material life: rent, food, pawnshop objects, books, dust, garbage, birds, and the nocturnal machinery of a city.
Preparations for Winter
Preparations for Winter treats cold as an organizing condition. Roof, walls, rent, taxes, bottles, jars, cured meat, and prescriptions gather into a vocabulary of preparation, while pawnbroker relics and the image of a dying Minotaur pull the poem toward exhaustion, remorse, and difficult choices.
Watching Cut Flowers Die
Watching Cut Flowers Die slows the scene further. Stillness, books, blankness, dust, birds, mice, surveillance machines, and a garbage truck enter a quiet nocturnal field. The poem’s attention moves between inner space and the small mechanical events continuing outside it.
Cold, objects, and attention
Both poems give physical objects unusual psychological weight. Domestic necessities and discarded things carry fatigue, memory, and anxiety without losing their concrete presence. The result is a pair of poems whose atmosphere depends on exact material detail and a persistent awareness of time passing through rooms and bodies.