I just finished Bhanu's new book, Ban en Banlieue, so I feel as gutted and peripheral as ever.
What I learned is that the book is just a piece of ash. There is so much that Bhanu refuses. I think her refusal is the deepest species of refusal / a refusal that doesn't enter into any discussion of refusal that currently exists.
"Feral events cut through."
But this above. These pictures are from my poem, "Fear is the Beginning of Dedication / of a Devotion." It is a poem or an essay that is located in a part of my book, The Pulp Vs. The Throne, It is a poem or an essay from a part of my book called, Public Excess Channels. It is a poem or an essay that was selected by Dawn Lundy Martin (a powerfulflower) to be the winner of the Gigantic Sequins poetry contest. If you want to read it in the new issue of Gigantic Sequins, you can go here.
It's odd to look at it now, feeling as ditched I do. As In-between. Waiting to hear back from schools / it's a waiting that makes my body twitch in stupid, embarrassing pain. I am ashamed to be an applicant, I realize. I feel ashamed because it's so possible I won't get further than that. I feel ashamed because I have my fear / I watch it hold me / my devoted fear. I watch it touch my outline, filled with sea glass and magnolias.
While I teach, I think of what I would like to tell my students / what I would like to bring them. Let's go to the small cracks and leave our things in it. Let's come back and make notes. Instead, I try to talk about war.
I bike to class / I break into beginning light how it peels against.
I'm thinking of the new title that sits in the seashell of my bones, the part where they curl, waiting to travel and / or fail. I want to write something called "Collection / Agency," and maybe stop using the backslash / and maybe keep using the backslash.
I keep thinking of talking to Ashley Chambers about throwing her wet self onto the floor of the Yale Divinity school while performing.
I made vegan pierogis and listened to Alice Notley and Lisa Robertson speak about the desert and the city. I repeated what they said in disbelief.
I finished this interview, as well, with CJ. It made me feel crazy and like nothing I am thinking about right now is touching each other. None of it is touching. However, I have claws. We have the birth of the word, haunting. Sex / Study.
A couple years ago, near the glass windows that lead to the pool, I let some men draw my picture / I didn't have my clothes on. The pictures came out smeared / colorful. MISS WISCONSIN, it says on one. I didn't even try to keep them / claim them. I'm not sure why that's arising here. I was thinking about it today / wishing for a garden to tend. To dump all these shreds in.
"Because nude pages are smudged. Prehensile. Dirty. A way to predict writing but not writing itself."
