VI. Dreadful Contact

 

 

I know the rest of the night will be as devoted to work as love as I’m now resting in this expensive

sentence and in the end I’ll spend it fast writing to you anyway, addressing you and a solution or

night beginning like a letter, just a few words more freely seeing everything more clearly than the

rest of life and love tends to be like windows facing mostly south but surrounding us, I’m thinking

of you

 

-Bernadette Mayer

I LOOK AT YOU AND FEEL TOPLESS,

like a burn victim or a mermaid.

I write decay, decay, decay so I can

look at it and change my life.

Describe a morning you woke up without fear.

 

-Bhanu Kapil

I wake up on the cold of J’s floor. I have been thinking about you His house is red and pouring

with gaps that let full threads / The sun / exhalation / A boundary of ours in. I call my limbs raw

nurses. I call them cruel thuds. I have been passed by weather drowning a socket a clearing

His house is set back from the road. It’s in a recess / a pause / it’s so red / it’s burning / during

the while. I have been c i r c u l a t i n g a socket a clearing I wake up on the cold of J’s floor

without shrinking one hundred velvet spikes. I have been thinking about writing to you in this

way How does the imperceptible element / an intercapillary patience / veilpiss / salt lovers

become the site of species intensity? Frames open and / invention sends. / Frames open and /

affiliation / or all ash facing up / approaches / from an unstable distance.

 

 

Light coming through stone

is an extraordinary event.

What if resistance floats immediately?

 

Without shrinking, I wake up describing.

 

Without shrinking, I wake up salt lovers

/ godlets

/ pink lightning

/ jellyfish

/ underwater bees.

 

Without shrinking, I wake up this container of hearts and stomachs.

 

Without shrinking, I wake up water / a dangerous cut loosed below.

 

Without shrinking, I wake up bulging jewels / or subsumed by my limbs.

 

Without shrinking, I wake up writing to you.

I am here. / I wrote it out again,

 

the intimately expanding memory,

 

the healing map swallowing a dead wood providing, from scratch.

 

Where did it go? How embarrassed am I by how I change? / By what?

 

 

The recess / the pause / the secret donor entrance. I thought for a moment I would never stop growing I

put on J’s sweater and go outside to smoke one of his cigarettes while he keeps sleeping or puts

welts of bread in a skillet. The sweater has diamond shapes and shedwater on it. Shades of /

orange and green / or yellow that aren’t dull / but neglected. J’s house is so red / it’s burning /

during the while. My unconditional presence in and around it There are headstones pressed into

the sides of it. Headstones, headdresses, I say to myself, dragging. I feel warm I have lifted it by

my pleasure I touch the text / the seed / the marbles / the shift braided into the rock / into the

animal rock / and think of how we (C and J) are in love with people (N and H) that are not us. I

think of how we know it because we are still reading to each other. It’s not private / It can’t be

regulated I think of how we know it because J asked me at the bar the night before. If I am in

love with N. Yes, I said. Yes and regenerating flowers suddenly blew up into

 

the vital arrangement of admission.

 

IT WAS SO HOT /

AND IT WAS SO

HUMAN.

-What if writing down a name

-is a form of word choice / my unconditional presence

–in and around it?

-To makea choice / my unconditional presence

–in and around it / To make a threshold I squat into /

-A contorted relaxation /

-is to followthe surrounding vibrational

-as it creates / destroys / PILES on /

-as it atmospheres an unravelling.

-To write down your name and to follow it

-with Yes, is to think

-for a moment that I will never stop

-growing.

 

I woke up on the cold of J’s floor and there was a text

message from N / WHERE R U? WHY AREN’T U

HERE?

 

 

 

It’s hard for me to speak so plainly about the body

 

/ my friend

 

/ I have sex with my friends /

 

 

I still search for a wild god / J comes outside to join me /

 

to join me We are talking when he / reaches over

/ to gather up my hair

/ to pull my hair to the top of my hair

/ to reveal my neck.

 

This vital arrangement

 

/ This vital safety

 

 

my friend holds there

with his edible body

/ fastened grain

and skins.

 

IT WAS SO HOT /

AND IT WAS SO

HUMAN.

 

Without shrinking, I say, What is a choke hold?

 

Without shrinking, I say, What is a chose hold?

 

Without shrinking, I say, I see a double kingdom choose over my mouth / the ground.

 

Without shrinking, I say, The ground is an earth candle.

 

Without shrinking, I say, It’s an earth candle with dog necks / slanted into it.

 

Without shrinking, I say, Dog necks that ate at each other.

I try to rest at points. I go outside, and I try to put it on the ground. I try to put my devastation on

the ground. I try to put it on the ground and pay it. My devastation, I pay it.

Dear J,

Dear situationroom,

 

Does rubbing have any ends?

What is a corridor of peaks and does it dangle inside me like snow?

What is the difference between chaos and territory?

I am touching clay and connecting it to the work to be.

Which flower do you gravitate towards?

“I threw away my shoes looking

for you on the throat

of a flower”

This is from a poem I sent you,

but I don’t know who wrote it.

Why do you think they did it?

“And I live in the vague

terror you will call and offer me a summer song and a coffee.”

Why do we offer ourselves?

Where is rareness?

Do you remember the New Year’s I wrote to you

and said, I left someone. I did. I did. I did. How could I? Am I full /

Am I full of nothingness / Heavily so?

Do you remember when we stood outside

/ and my hair was disturbed

by the healing event / The sun / exhalation / A boundary of ours?

I understand waking up / Here is the slaughter of sequence / a floral /

they can always be reshaped and sometimes

that is so IT for me.

Dear J,

Dear situationroom,

 

Inexperienced change makes me

/ Inexperienced change

 

MAKES ME LAUGH / MAKES ME SWOLLEN

 

DOES IT YOU?

From The Garden of The Blue F.U. Dogs:

 

Dear Carrie,

 

I started reading Bluets tonight. I’m 1⁄4 done already and it’s late

but I feel the need to finish it now. I was starting to feel the full

weight of the book when Kelin texted me that she loves me, was

reading umbrella essay, and hoped I was in a good moment. Or

“on the verge.” Then I separated all of Abby’s letters from my

other letters, tied them in a bundle, and stood there not knowing

what to do with them. Why should I be telling you? It sounds

like I’m hung up. I’m not. But Bluets loosed something. I see

what you mean. I am listening to Molina by the green horse.

When I sat down to the letters I found this postcard and knew

to write you. Maybe, selfishly, to salvage something of myself.

It’s true it was a hard time I come through / But I’m still

thankful for the blues.

Love, N

WHAT R U / WHERE R U

SHACKED FLESH / RECKLESSLY

SLOW / ON MY HUMAN SKIN?

 

Work lay / work was in a spreadable wire

And positioned above it was a word /

 

How do I moor

/ love?

Why would I?

Work lay / work was secured by material

 

that could be crushed beneath a body /

 

folded gently and precariously

 

just from the weight of itself.

How do I several

/ scary light

light

light

light?

WHEN I LOOK AT YOU, I BLANK OUT

activated.