Elisa English

If I fuse all of myself to all of you, it would seem to involve Virgil, a soupçon of Some Verses On... (and Montaigne really went there with: “...fatum est in partibus illis/ Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera ceßent,/ Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi”—hee 🐝 “wholly peradventure”), Chaucer (because that verb ⬇️—really?) and a whole lot of this imaginarium of ours on absolute max—because I know you have suggestions... 🫦 And as for me? I am fine, I am 🐻... I am... contemplating. Meanwhile, Venus herself inspires... 🏛️🌹🌿

“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”

-Audre Lorde, New Year’s Day-

In this brief ode to joy (trademark Keats but more nightingales 🕊️ and Grecian urns ⚱️ than indolence 🥱 or melancholy 😞—Psyche 🧝🏻‍♀️ could go either way though she does link back to Eros 💘 so I think we’re probably good) I wish to clutch at tangibility, not so much via 1819 but my blessing of a 🐈‍⬛ who has half a shaved head, four shaved legs and a really healthy wound that still screams, “I’m here to audition for the role of Frankenstein’s feline,” (which also hails from the 1818-19 Romantic vault, and of course, she knows that—I always tell her she’s clever ☺️ because why on earth would I not?) So too (to?) the happ—the hence and here’s some of words...

“We split it down the middle, bitten fighearts, needle through the tender seed. Every sticky drop licked from our fingers: how I recall your mouth—              laughter descending to the valley,              light darkening to shadow,              but sweet              like figs.”

-Tamara Jobe, Figs-

“And the other wolf O his mouth aches in mine O his mouth Opens in red ribbons And red windows

O the red room of his mouth That I am sleeping so soundly in”

-Dorothea Lasky, What is This Journey I Am On-

“Laced like this,

diadem like this,

we live the past/ present/ future/ all at once

and even now.

Wouldn’t we tear seas, cities, money to get to each other?”

-Sarah Gambito, Grace-

“oh

strip my safety vest        I am just one yes in this overmuch world”

-Paula Cisewski, Personal Universe: Summer-

“We also write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely. We write as the birds sing, as the primitives dance their rituals. If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it. When I don’t write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my colour. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.”

-Anaïs Nin, The New Woman-

If you’re wondering where I am, I’m currently looping through a not-entirely-unexpected re-creation of this. I say “not-entirely-unexpected” only in service of the fact that it wasn’t expected today, but they rushed the results because I’m me and my “me-ness” continues to require a level of compassion for which I’ve always been grateful. Either that or it’s because I sound twelve on the phone.

Anyhow, when I talk about souling (I really don’t know if that’s ⬅️ spelt right, but I do know I’m not changing it to *ahem* “scrolling”) with my animals, I’m being more literal with that term than I am at almost any other time. And this little poppet, blessing of a mini panther that she is, has a tumour which leaves me both quietly devastated and focused on the logistics of her surgery.

“If love wants you; if you’ve been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills, with warm blood and cold. With feathers and scales. Under the hot gloom of the forest canopy you’ll want to breathe with the spiral calls of birds, while your lashing tail still gropes for the waves. You’ll try to haul your weight from simple sea to gravity of land. Caught by the tide, in the snail-slip of your own path, for moments suffocating in both water and air. If love wants you, suddenly your past is obsolete science. Old maps, disproved theories, a diorama.”

-Anne Michaels, Skin Divers-

“When you stand on bare earth in your bare feet and the lightning whips through you, two ways at once, they say you are grounded, and that’s what poetry is: a hot wire.”

-Margaret Atwood, Sor Juana Works in the Garden-

“desperation is best described by all the places i let you sink your teeth”

-Khaya Osborne, When All the Dandelions Have Wilted, the Scratch of Tobacco is So Much Less Damning-