from a copy of The American Poetry Review, cut & arranged & pasted on the face of a greeting card that originally read:
Thankful Heart
Thank You
Appropriation Week 1:
did i float unaware of the 3000 lb. machine
This is the S curve, the tilt, the jump.
I can't just be tracking the lapses
the bliss of sleep and tea
You must be able to be empty.
the steel vehicle now a lost memory
moment given to any flimsy fawn who makes it to its feet--
"What are the 39 steps?"
where the gondolier's hat, what century?
our desperate sombreros and run, my froggy, run.
the apartment to a sprint,
And Odysseus is on his way here now,
for the train, and yes, I'm sure I'm being followed.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
The (continuous) start of a Dialogic(?) Text
Derrida, you’ve rendered me illiterate! Reads “Deconstruction” as “Destruction.” Perhaps I could consider it a gift, though it could take as long as a lifetime to repay, and likely only on credit. Is that a tongue in his cheek? or a mound of tobacco?
Approaching a text, I am advised to interrogate its borders, limits and origins. I tip-toe the perimeter, avoiding a centre where there is no sure footing. A structure is built and bears, having endured its own genesis. Too dreamy an architect, I’ll have blood on my hands.
Destruktion, says Freud, must be externalized as it stands “nearer to Nature than does our resistance.” Freud and I circled each other, aggressors with minds to save, thus solve, our selves. Thinks “it must have been the cocaine.”
An amalgamation of the French words for differ and defer, differance opposes its own identity. It marks two different things as it defers any final definition. Pleasantly confounded, I wait for (want for?)a wholly new, plastic language.
(Intentionally?) Less than perfect translation insists upon a play of forces within the text itself and between the text and the reader, who applies her own force and allows her own play. Léger de main (in my fake French)
The contradictions of cultural binaries seem only to suggest repressed desire, only semi-present, but pointed to by the traces of semi-absence. Female in form, contentious in content: a grown child, dogmatically borderline, a real faker.
Differance, like me, decides itself neither passive nor active. For a spell, only pencil: ink implying permanence and strike-throughs admitting defeat.
This swap of a letter poses (quite silently) a phonemic challenge, as the “error” can only be noticed when committed to paper. Sings “what a difference an a maaaakes.”
“There is nothing outside the text.” Heidegger is a friend of a friend, a practical stranger. This keeps me an outsider, while he is caged inside his own text, translated into an additional text to be cited within another text referred to by a next text.
Approaching a text, I am advised to interrogate its borders, limits and origins. I tip-toe the perimeter, avoiding a centre where there is no sure footing. A structure is built and bears, having endured its own genesis. Too dreamy an architect, I’ll have blood on my hands.
Destruktion, says Freud, must be externalized as it stands “nearer to Nature than does our resistance.” Freud and I circled each other, aggressors with minds to save, thus solve, our selves. Thinks “it must have been the cocaine.”
An amalgamation of the French words for differ and defer, differance opposes its own identity. It marks two different things as it defers any final definition. Pleasantly confounded, I wait for (want for?)a wholly new, plastic language.
(Intentionally?) Less than perfect translation insists upon a play of forces within the text itself and between the text and the reader, who applies her own force and allows her own play. Léger de main (in my fake French)
The contradictions of cultural binaries seem only to suggest repressed desire, only semi-present, but pointed to by the traces of semi-absence. Female in form, contentious in content: a grown child, dogmatically borderline, a real faker.
Differance, like me, decides itself neither passive nor active. For a spell, only pencil: ink implying permanence and strike-throughs admitting defeat.
This swap of a letter poses (quite silently) a phonemic challenge, as the “error” can only be noticed when committed to paper. Sings “what a difference an a maaaakes.”
“There is nothing outside the text.” Heidegger is a friend of a friend, a practical stranger. This keeps me an outsider, while he is caged inside his own text, translated into an additional text to be cited within another text referred to by a next text.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Last night, I dreamt I was tricked into a suicide pact.
The Skin is, Now--Dardin Appropriation Attempt #1
i.
I ache too. Dull and too constant in green. You don’t expect blue: a patriot might. But it grew when you graved the Japanese flag in the skin of my forearm. Blue rays red at angles
still, only green
ii.
It is red and it is rising. There is no birth, but still life. A throbbing green where you planted for them only I grew up in the third space. I dug to the reasons When I knew you were leaving Kept whole and cornered The skin is, now all rays and angles
iii.
There is no glide. But we search for the vowels in A void. There, in the green speech patterns of silicon mouths, an active voice. You count A.I. I think “Oh, You!”
iv.
I found a secret constellation in your forearm and oiled my lips on purpose and woke up green. It was new when it moved east in my cheek, my speech changed
but I said I’ll see you still.
i.
I ache too. Dull and too constant in green. You don’t expect blue: a patriot might. But it grew when you graved the Japanese flag in the skin of my forearm. Blue rays red at angles
still, only green
ii.
It is red and it is rising. There is no birth, but still life. A throbbing green where you planted for them only I grew up in the third space. I dug to the reasons When I knew you were leaving Kept whole and cornered The skin is, now all rays and angles
iii.
There is no glide. But we search for the vowels in A void. There, in the green speech patterns of silicon mouths, an active voice. You count A.I. I think “Oh, You!”
iv.
I found a secret constellation in your forearm and oiled my lips on purpose and woke up green. It was new when it moved east in my cheek, my speech changed
but I said I’ll see you still.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
today i typed "craigslust" instead of "craigslist."
Some misguided advice,
overheard: "if you like to write, you should really get a Twitter."
occurs to me: this piece could ultimately prove Twitter-esque, that is, if twitter is, in fact, to chitter.
In a conversation witnessed, (which wants to say “privy: to but has some doubt) something of interest: “ear witness,” which basest research confirmed as “The Earwitness: 50 Characters,” a work of Elias Canetti. First blank filled, I scoured the internet for body text, pausing intermittently to wonder at life on Internet B.G. (Before Google!) The found passage starred namesake, The Earwitness, who dons a pair of “secret ears” at his 9-to-5 as all-knowing, never-forgetting.
Come Happy Hour, The Earwitness removes his ears and loosens his tie from a single-Windsor. He buys a round for the bar. People like him, people trust him.
The Eavesdropper (The Earwitness) is either architect or voyeur. He has either dreamed up or found his shelter in an enclave. He is perched there, as Guardian, or is hidden in plain sight.
The Overhearer has strayed, or was perhaps windblown, from her trajectory and has happened upon a safe space just below an eave. Resting there, she is part of the façade.
Eavesdropping finds itself on the outside of social etiquette, though nowadays the Suits call it tapping, (careful-not-to-type-taping) and it’s been cited as a necessary means of protection.
protests: I am awfully polite, really! Of course, there are some days in which I lose sight of social graces because my hair needs washing and I've mislaid my lip balm and music only plays through the left of my ear phones and I can only hear half of "The Gift," the short story John Cale recites to me about a fatal magic trick. In the wake of monogamy, a special delivery, but it's lost its sex without "Booker T." I read somewhere that Lou Reed scribbled it sometime in college and I'm failing as a writer and as a daughter and as a set of eyes, or lungs or legs, but not yet as a pair of ears.
I should sit, from now on, ears cupped, on the subway,
eyes could close to convince an ocean in each palm.
And like the wave, we can never get away from our source.
overheard: "if you like to write, you should really get a Twitter."
occurs to me: this piece could ultimately prove Twitter-esque, that is, if twitter is, in fact, to chitter.
In a conversation witnessed, (which wants to say “privy: to but has some doubt) something of interest: “ear witness,” which basest research confirmed as “The Earwitness: 50 Characters,” a work of Elias Canetti. First blank filled, I scoured the internet for body text, pausing intermittently to wonder at life on Internet B.G. (Before Google!) The found passage starred namesake, The Earwitness, who dons a pair of “secret ears” at his 9-to-5 as all-knowing, never-forgetting.
Come Happy Hour, The Earwitness removes his ears and loosens his tie from a single-Windsor. He buys a round for the bar. People like him, people trust him.
The Eavesdropper (The Earwitness) is either architect or voyeur. He has either dreamed up or found his shelter in an enclave. He is perched there, as Guardian, or is hidden in plain sight.
The Overhearer has strayed, or was perhaps windblown, from her trajectory and has happened upon a safe space just below an eave. Resting there, she is part of the façade.
Eavesdropping finds itself on the outside of social etiquette, though nowadays the Suits call it tapping, (careful-not-to-type-taping) and it’s been cited as a necessary means of protection.
protests: I am awfully polite, really! Of course, there are some days in which I lose sight of social graces because my hair needs washing and I've mislaid my lip balm and music only plays through the left of my ear phones and I can only hear half of "The Gift," the short story John Cale recites to me about a fatal magic trick. In the wake of monogamy, a special delivery, but it's lost its sex without "Booker T." I read somewhere that Lou Reed scribbled it sometime in college and I'm failing as a writer and as a daughter and as a set of eyes, or lungs or legs, but not yet as a pair of ears.
I should sit, from now on, ears cupped, on the subway,
eyes could close to convince an ocean in each palm.
And like the wave, we can never get away from our source.
Friday, May 1, 2009
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