Elisa English

My absolute favourite thing about week 39 is that I spend a not insignificant amount of time wandering around with a positive array of stuffed toys (and on Friday, two proper armfuls) and nobody finds it strange. I’ve had all sorts of conversations today while ferrying around this ➡️ crew 🦒🐅🦄🐯🐶🐅🦒 Yes, there are two giraffes and three tigers. No, I don’t know why but they are now cosied up in my office in the world’s most eclectic furry orgy.

Anyhow, I should probably add that I have a fancy new title and my own sovereign state of a faculty to add to my pastoral empire. Oh, and it’s also Bastille Day, which means we should indulge in a little: “What do you call a Frenchman who’s been attacked by a cat?”/ “Claude!” levity. What? It’s Tuesday and I’m always told that I’m funny on a Tuesday.

“Say I chew desire and water in an explosion of sugar wings in my mouth.

Say it tastes of you.”

-Joy Harjo, Desire-

“Perfect… for my taste, for my sensuality, for my sweet tooth, yes, perfect. But I want more. I want it all. I must have it all.

And I enter into memory and I want more.

Now I am a vampire.

I want the blood from your neck and more. Your throat and more. Your chin and more. Your cheeks and more. Your nose and more. The precocious lines of your eyes and more. Your eyelashes and more. Your eyebrows and more. The space between them and more. Your forehead and its unjust wrinkles and more. Your temples and more. Your ears and more. The nape of your neck and more. I want your veins, your viscera, your muscles, your glands, your humours, your thoughts.

I want your passion.”

-Excilia Saldaña, In the Vortex of the Cyclone: Selected Poems-

The languid swell of another day conveys texture, conviction, the perennial quandary of just how few clothes one can wear and still remain decent. I rescind nothing. It is. We are. I am, languid under air, of feeling. But if we escalate much further, we are never coming back down.

God, I think it’s this again 🦋🚀🦩 Except with a whole lot of this ♾️❤️‍🔥💋 Oh, and this 🐻 because it’s me and this 🫦 because I have no fucking shame, it seems.

“fill me, empty me, talk to me, warm me, let me suck on you.”

-Adrienne Rich, Living in the Cave-

People of a limited persuasion might suggest that my free writes should be blushing. Needless to say, this ⬇️ is not. Nor the rest. Nor me—although I can be demure as all fuck... when I wish, if I want... It all melts down to the same pulse. You know, throw this on, give a little shimmy to the stars. And then? Just... my lingual execution... which I do want—to slide between the words...

“I love and desire you. —You’re insane.”

-Marguerite Duras, Destroy, She Said-

“I think of how the mystics read by the light of their own bodies. What a world of darkness that must have been to read by the flaming hearts that turn into heaps of ash on the altar, how everything in the end is made equal by the wind.”

-Timothy Liu, Vox Angelica-

“(would you like to read to me in the soft would you like to enter me in the soft

would you like a lunch of me in the soft in its long delirium?)”

-Deborah Landau, Soft Targets-

“Let’s just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little.”

-Charles Bukowski, Post Office-

“I said I love you like math, Infinite and exact And you cannot subtract from my attraction Or reduce into fractions Infinitesimal as the decimal to my point”

-Chad Anderson, Like Math-

It occurs to me as I navigate another of those nebulous segues that I should chronicle these things more. I spent last night on stage, have floated through today on too little sleep, and yet there is this ⬆️—the least personal of what’s poured in (I have to maintain a certain veil) but no less important than this. So of course, my soul... It overfloweth.

Bless and bless and bless them. All the bunnies and all the bears. 🐻 Year of the hawk, blah blah. I know, but I’m still me despite the dint of my creation. As for the unfathomable? It’s not. Not really. You just show up every day, do the best you can with what you have, and you make it matter.

“you raised me from the dead // sinister digits // if there’s // a right way // to stroke raw honey from the lioness’s mouth”

-Destiny O. Birdsong, Ode to My Penis-