From a Montevidayo post regarding The Black Swan:
 
"In the comment field to a previous post Adam Strauss suggested that Nina is a lesbian, but I think that’s making her too stable."
 
The above response strikes me as participating--accidentally I suspect--in the well established discourse of lesbian erasure.  For something to be visible there--typically--is a minimal degree of stability required, so to jump (as the comment does in the bit I didactically leave out) to emphasizing an instable sexuality seems to me to be a move in collusion with the prior mentioned erasure; or if not erasure just uninterest.  Now if it was stated that the character in question--Nina--is for sure not clearly a heterosexual, then I'd be less suspicious of this comment.  As may be clear, I find the notion of polysexuality--or sexuality as unstable electron-cloud etc--very problematic: it seems to afford the opportunity to bypass just how terribly rigid sexuality exists in situated circumstances happening off the page or out of the performance or frame or art-space.   That said, I don't think utopical theorizing/rendering the world wonderfully aesthetic and outside conventional political restraints is bad; just very simultaneously problematic, and perhaps a great vehicle for subtle forms of heterosexual hegemony.  If someone wants to go to logoslalafantabulastic land (or more like outre atmosphere)--and I often want to and do--yay--but please clearly cite counter-arguments to that stance! 

I need to finally write up a review of S Simonds Warsaw Bikini!

A Mess Of Fry

Once upon tines.
Tinsel telescopes collapsing a soundscale.
Trips and wires.
Viruses as lookouts.
Viral arias.
Scission teetering at the top of immune to toppling.
Ripcurls rankle rapport.
Curls clue us into outré.
Outsiders snuggle.
Insiders struggle.
Interiors resemble the chambers of expensive seashells.
Lustrous undersides.
Bellies and belies.
Tropes ride meridians like cowboys hold-on to bull-bucks.
Ropes made from tropical fibers.
What does all mean?
All doesn’t.
Eggs and a scrambled game of The Dozens.
Eggs and eggs.
Ducks.
An ideogram for an egg no bird lays.
An extinct bird in a contemporary sentence.
A sentence in the manner of the 17th century writ in bird-blood.
Manners glance at mannerist paintings.
Ants crawl over thick blue strokes.
The blue changes from second to second till it’s a color there’s no English word for.


Becoming Another Species

Fish on their way to flying.
Flight concluding in crushed lungs.
Light no-one can see this surround’s so dark.
No species in the vicinity of here can hear these soundwaves.
Looking at these chipped plates helps make sense of sentience.
Fine lines which don’t matter at a distance or close-up. 
Final breaths before more.
Starts without precedents.
Art with uncanny incidents.
Tar with echoing myths.
Relief and remittance interloping the other.
Flagged down.
Fags getting’ up.
Pansies storm down foregrounding a marlin being gaffed.

More A Less point

Graceless lace.

Caul wrapped around a lollypop for the heaven of it.

Calls for the heave of it.

Heaven of it a pointlessness.

Pointlessness a splendid.

A sentence from Stein sashays out of its pulpy bondage.

Sentences split from their spines.

Excision as very-very-very bloody and the bleeding cerebral.

Brain blood.

Flushed cortex.

Brainy sex.

Bloody sexuality.

Heterosexual versus homosexual S and M.

Turn as chiasmus.


Why have I singlespaced the first two pieces, and not the third one posted?  Why grant greater pauses?  Lace doesn't clearly link to more space! 

Of course "New Criticism" is not the only mode in which thoroughness can take place.  However thoroughness occurs is lovely to me.  Rachel Blau De Plessis is not necessarily a New Critic, and her essays tend towards the splendidly thorough!  Amartya Sen (not a lit-crit for the most part, true), if anything, downplays the importance of language--and he too is soooooo thorough.  I suppose all I'm arguing for is the delight I experience when people take the effort to substantiate their claims, to do the difficult work of explanation/connection, as opposed to relying almost entirely on the "gesture."  I do not, as is likely implicitly clear,  have much enthusiasm for innovative criticism.  Yes, poem is a porous boundary, but I do not want what is more than less a poem to serve as replacement for academic/expository/argumentative prose.  Manifestos (with O'Hara and Warhol as exceptions (and likely others I have not read)), grin, ought to go jumping off the nearest cliff. Funnily, I love impressionism when it comes to paintings.  And I often find non-contemporary belles lettres charming. 

Gorannson has responded again, and it is kind and ungrouchy and I am grateful.

Johannes Goransson, in a Montevidayo blog comment-box, has written a dismissal of my distrust of metaphor; I've responded and hope I don't appear too annoyed (firm, sure; agressive, I hope not) in my trying to articulate why I find his response rather inadequate.  Relating to this: it seems some poets are really into dissing closely reading a text, and instead want to banish that kind of response and replace it with belles lettres; why oh why?  New Criticism does not have to be retrograde; on the contrary, it can communicate a ton, and it can allow a reader to really look at the text(s) in question, whereas belles lettres may end up saying far more about the responder than the work being responded to.  Too, belles lettres I think might be said to be predicated on authority (declarative syntax, minimal support with evidence for why a given claim is made) and I like essays which don't take authority for granted.

Will very soon read Jonah Winters' recent Octopus poems, as they appear to have something to do with Lesbians, who I feel are massively under-covered by contemporary American poetry, and in particular--"experimental" poetry worlds.

I hope the blog-comment box debate and the subsequent shutting down of Silliman's
is temporary--lasting long enough to instill the importance of being only as feisty as is needed.

As when, in the thick
Of an illicit
Interaction, there's a click--
It's then that I
Start worrying:
Pulling hanks
From mannequins, appealing to
The outer district's
Most esoteric
Stances like humidity
Refracts a rainbow, raw row
Through a reticule
In whose micro-clime
There's always enough time.

No luck reaching the finalist stage with Omnidawn's chapbook contest; oh well--one o' these days maybe I will make it to a shortlist!

Octet of a Non-Existant Petrarchan Sonnet:

The scrawl was just that, misprision
No suture could mend, like edelweiss.
We weren't left alone with the device
Everyone's whispering about, as in a Fun
House timbre which threatens the spun-
Glass balance I perch on as doves slice
The grey air, supple with the scent of spice
But abrasive not sweet like a Cinnabun.

1

In the
Interest of saving
Time, let's
Adumbrate--
Or gaze--
At our reflections in
These plates--
Sopped clean; sea-life
Nipping a corpse couldn't do any better.

2

One of the scopes
Was missing
Like a tiger
A tooth; the tooth
Is lodged under
A step
Grit dusts like
Talcum or falcon
Droppings from the pair nesting above.

The way the yes
Rolls off the tongue
Of the girl in this Roller
Derby makes her horny, makes her
Mom crave an orchid--
One from Ghana--
and Riana on the radio
But the only
Plug here mirrors a tumor
Roughly the size
And shape of a fetal Macaw.

Outlying--embryo on
Its way

In--inner--eruptive
Sensibility

Stemming a sight
More falling than

Water--titanium-hard--
Shimmering

Helices dissolve
Encrypting

An Organism starting to
Originate.

Ok I've likely fibbed a bit: probably do have a one in ten acceptance rate; but I don't think it's one in 6, and that'd be amazing.

Please if you glance at this blog--post a comment!

I'm really beginning to burn out on rejections--one from Typo just a minute ago, for example.
It'd be nice if my acceptance rate could reach the 1 in ten rate! Oh well.

There-there care-bear, wherever sunlight
Dapples delicious things grow and grow

You up-up, into ether
Whose general profile

Concords to titanium--
Conceptual

Art pieces on a wall in Lithuania:
Stars of a gallery famous for

An entrance all arches and no doors
Ensuring the security of inclusion.

A Fragment:

I--an am in ambivalent

Prose-Poem After/For Kate Zambreno

Squeak, amnesia! Kill lice with amyl nitrate! After your hair is an aftermath, allow your ass and limbs and torso to grow dirty--deeper than the deep of deep-clean. Once you're all dolled-down, walk the prettiest streets in your suburb. I assure you there'll be a huge moon out; its light will beautifully stage you--bats will whirl 'round your head, blindly and with utmost sensitivity admiring your amble.

“…one adjective too many and you’re out”

Parks and parcels and pickups and pitstops and pits and arms and armoires;

Exquisite parks and radiant pickups and egregious pitstops and anorexic arms and ostentatious armoires;

Exquisitely mannered parks and radiant roaring pickups and egregious gregarious pitstops and anorexic elegant arms and ostentatious splintery armoires;

Exquisitely mannered dangerous parks and radiant roaring jaundiced pickups and egregious gregarious gorgeous pitstops and anorexic elegant allotropic arms and ostentatious splintery aromatic armoires;—

All of the above has burned. Someone has swept the ash and pips into a pile. Scoop some of the char up and mix with oil; make up your eyes.

Two variants--likely influenced by Aase Berg in its use of repetition (tho that of With Deer is more emphatic, and I don't have a love of heavy-handed adjectives; what is it with her and "Evil"!? Evil landscape this, Evil that, and that, and that):

In the appall there is an atoll. Eventually there. Fine sand. White fine sand. Palm frond on sand. Sand on fronds. In the appall he dreams of apples. Air appears pixilated. Pixel apples fall on sand not white nor fine. Someone must not be there. Not someone but there is there anyways. Water temperature is rising; hotter and hotter laps the sand. Hotter and hotter rises and rises and rises; the atoll becomes closer and closer to being submerged. Picture palm fronds appearing to float or at-least sway akin some species of seaweed. Many atolls are palmless. Pick up sand; let your hand love. The subject is disappearing or already departed; what emerges in its absence or does anything? Not thing—occurrence. An appall mutates—apple dapple. Then pines needle. A pineapple sweet juice. A rosin tinted horizon—a resin-slow breath-metric.

In the appall there is an atoll. In the appall he dreams of apples. Air appears pixilated. Pixel apples fall. Water temperature is rising: hotter and hotter laps the sand. Hotter and hotter rises and rises and rises; the atoll becomes closer and closer to being submerged. The subject is disappearing; what emerges in its emerging absence? An appall mutates—apple dapple. Pines needle. A pineapple sweet juice. A rosin tinted horizon—a resin-slow breath-metric.

My response on an HTML Giant thread--or whatever the word is--regarding a comment by Adam Maynard:

Wow, this seems so much more awful than the intitial focus of this thread: “I’m with justin on this one. pemulis just comes across as a vapid cunt”; how can a cunt be vapid? Why even bother with the word cunt? I think a good general rule when it comes to gendered language is if you imagine you’d get upset at someone calling your mom–or girlfriend, or grandma, or daughter or boyfriend etc–the word, then find another word.

I wish I believed word equals world; but I don't--or at-least I don't believe words as poetry equal world.

I'm toying with the idea of no longer identifying as feminist, which is odd as I get annoyed reading poets who dismiss feminism: Eileen Myles, Alice Notley--those two names are on/off my tongue immediately; I'm sure there are many more. For some time now I've hoped humanism could be a synonym, but now I'm less sure, and I think humanism is where I'm more interested/faithful/hopeful.

Probably a better way to put "this" is: I don't know if the literary sphere can be feminist in any way which is seen as synonymous with the world off the page, and I'm not sure literary feminism makes enough sense as a concept, and this is almost appaling of me because so much of my feminism is rooted in the literary! I'm not, personally, thinking of literary and writing in general as synonyms; this quip/questioning applies less to expository writing; or maybe not.

Words which seem urgent to me--urgently in need of redefining and or more expansive definition: power, choice, consent.

"...her wounds came from the same source as her power":

This strikes me as a good poet-line correlative for feminism, and especially feminist heterosexuality-- as heterosexuality may be seen as an identity which massively disenfranchises women, and simultaneously heterosexual women have or are part of an immense power by being heterosexual.

Why don't I just go on a style kick on this blog--rave about the Petrarchan sonnet rhyme-scheme, Gianni Versace and his fabulous heavily beaded dresses circa 1990.

I love uberunhysteric radicalism! VW's 3G's! Amartya Sen! Guy Davenport's fiction!
I like the prose/prosepoem parts of, for example, Spring and All, but find the emphatic, hyperbolic tone actually far less radical than calmness, than VW or GD. Maybe it's "like" the difference between staging shitting in public, making it a happening, a performance, as opposed to just defecating and all the while engaging in exquistely polite discourse with a dapperly dressed man wearing a monocle, acting as if there's nothing odd/amiss--as if one is not creating a spectacle.

Hyperbole is an odd beast--is Emily Dickinson hyperbolic in her re-concieving of scale, or is the rescaling radical; are hyperbole and radical almost synonyms?

[Big leap?]

I wish there was a fat un-attractive (in any generic sense) female pop-star, not generically (or close enough: hello Lady G!) good-looking person who costumes themself in ways which may not be deemed duh nice-looking. Furthermore, I wish there were at-least three performers who fit this. Fat already is mainstream, so why not make it mainstage?

Not sure what binary is reversed when I--in my last post--diss a take on a part of VS's SCUM. I suppose the hypothetical (become, or became?, reality) notion that gay men are like women, and not, therefore, patriarchal. I do salute VS for recognizing that there's no automatic reason to equate gay guys to femininity/femaleness--that they can definitely be oppresive in
male-gendered ways.

Ok, here's another emerging question I have: is there power, and maleness tends to monopolize/abuse it, or is the power the maleness; put another way, does power have an inherent gender, or is it a field which any gender can embody, but which males often have far more access to. This then leads to me feeling I'm likely not imagining power in diverse enough ways--defining it too narrowly, like it is an entity which can be extricated from a real-time interaction. This then leads me to wondering about consent, but just what I'm wondering is at this very moment unclear. I hope all's well for all!

A blog comment of mine finally made it into visibility at Kate Zambreno's blog! I feel a bit like I've recieved an acceptance from an editor! She has links/responses to some interesting queer-theory pieces--"The Anti-Social Turn In Queer Studies" by Jack Halberstam, and a response by Jackie Wang.

............Here's a little Halberstam snippet--itself a summary/assessment (which seems quite dubious) of Valerie Solanas:

Instead she colonizes the domain of violence and offers, helpfully, to cut men up (SCUM) in order to demolish the hegemonic order. While straight men are walking dildos, gay men or faggots embody all the worst traits of patriarchy because they are men who love other men and have no use for women. In the manifesto this is called "faggotry"...

The above strikes me as extremely homo-hating (and couldn't this be deemed very patriarchal/masculinist/normative?) and utterly status-quo enforcing: men are men and women are women and these positions are discrete and antagonistic--grossly conservative, no? So how is Solanas "demolishi[ing]" "hegemonic order"? Shooting an anorexic fag seems pretty lame to me, and Solanas seems to reverse a binary and change nothing. I should read SCUM. I can--not lol--sooooooooooooooo see VS becoming big amongst heterosex white gals; thankfully much feminism is much too smart for this so I'm likely lying.

BTW: the JH essay is INTERESTING.

Much love!

Another culling:

Skies are
Skivvy. Blood-stained
Skiffs appear
Rusty. Tropical
Fat falls
Flat on the
Apex of a hill. Taste
My indefinite
Article—
The center of
A circumference—
A zero nothing goes round and round.

To be culled:

Cerebral slits. I saw. This is it. It is this. Imminence. As long as. Once when there weren’t flies focal points foliated. Once wasn’t enough. Wherever you are you aren’t there. Skies are skivvy. Blood-stained skiffs appear rusty. How much for those ones. Tropical fat falls flat on the apex of a hill like a nipple during arousal. Heats and fealty fragments a tale the color of the tumor which may in the future kill me. No cancer puns please as they’re in bad taste. Taste my indefinite article then take it away and call your own. At the center of a circumference—a zero—the temperature veered from very hot to freezing such that were one to see the changes on a screen the lines would resemble a polygraph. Nothing goes round and round in a slightly skewed circle. Puns are puny compared to playfully making no joke.

Lineation changes:

Herself hirsute prickle
At a square
Resembling Venice after fire and seen
Through Venetian
Blinds verily make green space. Transsexual
Patriarch puts a tough
Spin on possibility. Switches and
Whistle as slender wood
Whoops sensitive
Ass-cells sheathed in lace the mirror image of caul.

Another culling:

Herself hirsute prickle
At a square
Resembling Venice after fire and seen
Through Venetian
Blinds verily
Make green space. Transsexual
Patriarch puts a tough
Spin on possibility. Switches and
Whistle as slender wood
Whoops sensitive
Ass-cells sheathed in lace
The mirror image of caul.

Further prunings:

Do trips rip guts out or restate romance as theorized in the 70’s of the 16th century. Wreck this wrack. Flaps and flaps—here’s plastic not bird flying.

Oil on canvas; yes we’re talking crude. Fact— fiction—a fight over jurisdiction. Hyaline visages verify. Glossies blown by breezes smell fishy. Is this a case of fish-fume-laden breezes or breezes sensing amiss?

Now a lineated culling--with no words reordered or changed, but with dashes added:

Boogie from
Dusk to
Brunch-time—looking at
His toes—distances
Cannot always be
Traversed—I to
You and back
To we—it’s true—you
Have no reason to trust
Me—grasses catch fire—someone
Drops several pounds of salt.

And here's a chunk (in-progress?) prior to culling:

Herself defined as hirsute. History is a prickle becoming pickle. Peculiar syntaxes converge at a square resembling Venice after a massive fire and seen through venetian blinds. I tried to address the perplexities as performed by propinquities. This didn’t work the way I envisaged. Verily I make very a green space. She’s become the worst of maleness; is this purposeful or an accident she’s spent her life striving for. Transsexual patriarch puts a tough spin on the possibility of performance. Switches and switches. Whistle as slender wood whoops sensitive ass-cells. Asperity in the midst of newly sprouted asparagus piques my most favorite circuit that from eye to gut to eye. Eyeing gut I keeled over. Gluttony allowed me to regain balance. Sexy sheathed in lace the mirror image of caul. Girls call call-girls; they’re unsure whether they’re pranking or professing admiration or if the two are twined so tightly one and one is one.

Here's another culling from a longer language-chunk:

How can an interstice rive? How can it not? Oil on canvas; yes we’re talking crude. Fact— fiction—a fight over jurisdiction. Hyaline visages verify. Glossies blown by breezes smell fishy. Is this a case of fish-fume-laden breezes or breezes sensing amiss?

I continue to be interested in Baraka's Transbluency--interesting, to me, the way he has fags, and then he has queens, and he seems to not see these categories as part/parcel; and of course with a style which seems in conversation with O'hara, Ashbery, well, this all makes for an interesting homo-hating dynamic. Too, his poems seem to anticipate so much to come--as in work of now/thelast ten years: I see some Reginald Shepherd, for example.

Here's a recent fragment:

Pack—pick-axe. Eyes consort. Dim and dimity do each to each infinity. Fragments glitter firmamentally. Do trips rip guts out or restate romance as theorized in the 70’s of the 16th century. Wreck this wrack. Flaps and flaps—here’s plastic not bird flying. Dirt does eternity.


I'm wanting to write a la the method--if I remember rightly/and of course her method may have changed!--of Anne Marie Albiach, who has said she writes a long chunk of words, then cuts; this is what I sort of did above, except the language-chunk wasn't all that long. It is, in the above form, much shorter though. I wish I was really into writing poems via a slow, patient process.

Anterior to time seconds spit and hiss.

Arcady eradicates almost formed.

Fascist breezes blow through Arcady.

Almost formed seconds sit prettier than ducks.

This sky falls; there’s no raining.


Above--is it good, or almost good; or is it ugh-ugh pretentious? How can a breeze be Fascist? Noxious illegal fumes lacing the breeze? Is the point to juxtapose Arcady with its opposite? Why though would Arcady be opposite Fascism? Fascist is such an awkward term: political party turned general metaphor--ugh-ugh. Is sincerity a prerequisite for pretentiousness? Surely sometimes.

Regarding an earlier poem/whateverness: the "local bitterns" should be going blah to, not "blah too."

Below is a poem loosely inspired by Srikanth Reddy's Voyager; I'll be honest: based on what I've seen of the collection, I'm not a fan. I am, though, or at-least was, rather fond of his first book, Facts For Visitors. I'm not a fan of the single-sentence, or sentence fragment, line; enjambment rocks! I often work modes I'm less than drooling over; it's one of my most mega MOs.

I tried to tell you.
Telling you I tried to tell others.
You-all listened.
What ya’ll heard ain’t me.
There were birds; there often are.
Sometimes there are feathers blown about.
There’s rarely loose blood.
Nicked skin is common.
Someone illegally inserted glowing genes.
The expected results prove non-existent.
There’s unexpectedly radiant lymph.
This assumes the interpretive apparatuses aren’t a crock.
I dreamed of eating a lusciousness of hare and wine and blood.
I woke up tired from dreaming.

With Deer Poem

My psychobabble is not worth the wisdom of Margaret Drabble.
My psychobabbler looks best in the gold light of entablature.
With Deer my My makes scrumptious bites local bitterns have gone blah too.
I am in possession of me; my me is currently Margaret Drabble’s.
A bittern shits on the page in which the font’s named.
My psychology fetishizes fonts feeling out the feeling they’re a fount.
My isn’t me; it’s its exact opposition; the place I is stated divides I.
With Deer kenosis erupts into a positive—blood a bath starving souls nourish at.

Poem After/For Johannes Göransson (with edits):

With deer there are derisions.

Every time it rains hard enough the ferns bleed.

Every time it’s hard deer jump across ravines.

Blood warmth wilts the ferns.

Scarlet floods from wildlife crisp the tendrils.

Out of the body the crisping blood begets legs sans saddle.

A shivering human manages a mount.

Tongue to hallucinated hornrut a deer-filled gut hears yarrow sprout.

Ok now for some prose-notes: my Baraka on violence bit is bad--no quotation, no elaboration; and probably if I go looking for the line(s) which led me to making that statement they'll not even be there; oh well I suppose blogs aren't usually scholarship and hence I suppose I'm in no violation of what's blogwise legit but wow my blog blows! I envy many other bloggers their grace/panache/elan/I wish an eland would start blogging!

Another With Deer poem:

With deer drachmas
Are glittering in aromatic light
Lusciously stirs
Leaves out of gutters
As intricate
As guts or the struts
Stringing no-one alone along
The path resistance glides the way wayfaring elides.

Every blogcommentbox post I've made at Kate Zambreno's blog Francis Farmer Is My Sister has not seen the light o' day--I hope it's tech issues and not me making Kate mad.

I'm looking forward to With Deer arriving sometime hopefully soonish in my mailbox.

A portion of the Teare poem posted a few days ago is not formatted correctly. MMMMMMMMMMM, sex, religion, gayness: deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelish.

I've been recently reading Baraka's selected Transbluencies; I don't dislike it, but it doesn't get me in the gut either. When he's breakin' lines well, well I think that's swell. Some of his political theorizing seems spot-on (un-naive takes on Black Nationalism etc); other times, nope-nope: his takes on violence seem underdeveloped.

The lines below are--well, what isn't clear to me: perhaps the start of a poem; or perhaps they're the start of three poems! Fistfucking grosses me out!

Fuck this fist.

Scream pink roses are badass.

Whisper the end of sex is the start of sexuality.

Poem After/For Johannes Göransson:

With deer there are derisions.

Every time it rains hard enough the ferns bleed.

Every time it’s hard deer jump across ravines.

With human blood warmth wilts the ferns.

With the scarlet floods from wildlife the tendrils crisp.

Out of the body the crisping blood begets legs sans saddle.

A shivering human manages a mount.

Tongue to hallucinated hornrut a deer-filled gut hears yarrow sprout.

I think the poem below is really wonderful:

Eden Tiresias

by Brian Teare Brian Teare

[apocalypsis—L. to uncover, disclose]

i. “I am the sign of the Letter, / . . .”
No seed. Flat beneath my hand:
bone. Pelvis a field, but no seed.
Because there was no punishment
like fucking, its whip burned
Adam and nothing after. Because
shine took flight like two parrots
so deep green they seemed black.
And though the field tilted and split
forth meant two ways, though
far into the garden meant I lost
love, even a god could honor that.
“Cell by cell unsexed, I will light the
female,” said the snake, and what was
I was lost. What was shine fell;
a shed skin white as water falling.
Wisdom, when did it descend
weeping into each thing? I saw
too much to know who I was:
asleep in each molecule, chaos’s
energy. I couldn’t speak of this
change, how apocalypse once
gave tongue to each new skin
between my legs, twin parishioners,
bent prayer books inside me. Dominus
was Eden in me, and the Tree
the world had imagined, except:
interior, what asked for a mind
to hew with wounds. Except memory:
jibe, jilt, jest. What was real died
as its own elegy, as Adam did not.

ii. “. . . and the designation of the division.”
Mons: venus-field held horizon by sharp
fuckless months, field lain fallow. I lost him.
I did not love. Because bitterness lit me
strung tongue to gut. Because god loved
the way the snake shook shine into the tree,
leavening air with matte magnolia leaves.
My mouth opened to ask the snake’s name.
Like his tongue from which each word went
each way the meaning bent—leading me
the way back—, I never doubted what I didn’t
change down to the syllable, molecule,
shift between dahlia and dalliance, male to
woman, behold, becoming her, became me.
The tree wept cheap greenery; the snake left
what was knowledge, what was the given
matter: until Adam found me again, I put
weeping even inside myself: I knew
I could not explain I saw the end of things
static in anxious limitless rage. It was male,
and yet Adam found me the way language
meant to uncover: gladly he lent his mouth,
his hands, husband one, and one lover,
here the church, here the steeple: knuckles knelt,
o Deus, I remember: Self and Other,
and between us every elegy, all the fallen
language that couldn’t hold its own
and wouldn’t give it back, had no flesh
except how long dust keeps our alphabets.
It came alive outside the mind, intellect.
I loved it. He could not touch me there.

iii. “I am the sign of the Letter,
and the designation of the division.”
No seed. Flat beneath my hand:
mons: venus-field held horizon by sharp
bone. Pelvis a valley but no seed:
fuckless months, field lain fallow. I lost him
because there was no punishment
I did not love. Because bitterness lit me
like fucking, its wicked burn
strung tongue to gut. Because god loved
Adam and nothing after. Because
the way the snake shook shine into the tree,
the shine took flight like two parrots,
leavening air with matte magnolia leaves
so deep green they seemed black.
My mouth opened to ask the snake’s name;
and though the field tilted and split
like his tongue from which each word went
forth meant two ways, though
each way the meaning bent—leading me
far into the garden—meant I lost
the way back, I never doubted what I didn’t
love, even a god could honor that.
“Change down to the syllable, molecule,
cell by cell unsexed, I will light the
shifts between dahlia and dalliance, male-to-
female,” said the snake, and what was
woman, behold, becoming her, became me.
“I” was lost. What was shine fell;
the tree wept cheap greenery; the snake left
a shed skin white as water falling.
What was knowledge, what was the given
wisdom, when did it descend into
matter: until Adam again found me, I put
weeping inside each thing I saw.
Weeping even inside myself: I knew
too much to know who I was;
I could not explain I saw the end of things
asleep in each molecule, chaos
static in anxious limitless rage. It was male
energy. I couldn’t speak of this
and yet Adam found me the way language
changed, how apocalypse once
meant to uncover: gladly he lent his mouth,
gave tongue to each new skin.
His hands, husband one, and one lover,
between my legs, twin parishioners,
here the church, here the steeple: knuckles knelt
bent prayer books inside me, Dominus,
o Deus, I remember: Self and Other
was Eden in me and the Tree
between us every elegy, all the falls
the world had imagined except
language, what couldn’t hold its own
interior, what asked for a mind
and wouldn’t give it back, had no flesh
to hew with wounds, no memory
except how long dust keeps our alphabets.
Jibe, jilt, jest: what was real died as
it came alive outside the mind, intellect
its own elegy, and Adam did not
love it. He could not touch me there.