Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book
Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book
Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book
Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book
I heard a book a sea hallucinate, I heard suns plosive

plums love with fruit like falls, I heard the fish give

mass devour the rose fleshes of carnations without

protections
Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book

 

 

The Blood Barn

“take shelter from the reverence which covers all women”
(To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf)

 

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She asks me questions that take a long time to answer.

 

/ ?

? /

/ ?

 

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My beautiful friend J My beautiful body was here
My beautiful friend / My beautiful body 
 
We sat on the back porch and looked out at the poetry farm The pecan trees are so new they are lime / green Who can bear it /

We talk about how it felt to wake up /
with blood coming out of the left side of my face
/ We laugh / about me screaming
/ about me being so filled with /
the changing earth / a dream to know /
that I had / opened myself / Stupidly or
/ Extravagantly

When we stop laughing J / my beautiful friend / says, What are you / writing? What are we / writing?  It’s important / the questions put tenderly / and suddenly towards / the flayed flower What kind of space does it take? / says B in a letter / Are you still / where you were living? / says B in a letter Is the erratic punctuation missing or is it intentional / says the editor to the blood coming out of the left side of my face Is it easy to forget The word is a hard look that may go on would have been the thing to say / to reply with / to move a hurt cardinal out of the road when before / you didn’t / The word is a hard look that may go on / would have been the thing to say / but instead I said / I’m writing The Blood Barn

/ I’m writing / about my eating disorder / The one I had or have / To move a hurt cardinal out of the road when before / you didn’t / The one I have

Eating disorder is a phrase / and not a word / it’s a phrase that doesn’t go on / I have a destiny / my death did not complete it / it makes SENTENCES These This couldn’t understand how they came to be born An essay about distance and estrangement / An essay about learning how to speak / What is a descendant of sensitivity

 

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“If we’re going to heal / let it be glorious”

“If we’re going to heal / let it be glorious”

“If we’re going to heal / let it be glorious”

 

**********************************************************************************

 

“1,000 girls raise their arms”

“1,000 girls raise their arms”

“1,000 girls raise their arms”

 

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My dress came in the mail and it’s cardinal and orange and burnt and brick and it’s maybe a little big and pulling away from my body My death did not complete it / J + I are driving to the bar to celebrate / after his reading / when I shout, Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book / We are laughing J + I We were sitting on the back porch and looking out at the poetry farm / “Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing” / the early sunflowers / when I said, I’m writing The Blood Barn / I’m writing / about my eating disorder / The one I had or have / We are laughing and then we’re not because Eating disorder is a phrase / and not a word / it’s a phrase that doesn’t go on / How to explain that I am going to allow it to go on / How to explain that it may That it is almost May and I contain it / as a hard look that does go on Are you still / where you were living? What kind of space does it take?

 

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I have / haven’t met B in person. One time in Boston… / What happened? I remember I spoke to B about the same things I do now What is a descendant of sensitivity /

Do you live in a state of repercussion says B and I resist /

I tell N in the yard / in the early sunflowers / I was going to say No to B’s question, but know it is / a question I need / It takes a long time / to answer / To answer I describe the first time I saw a tank in the mountains / how I laid down in a ditch with my bike / To answer I describe a tank in the mountains / how it ground over the concrete Is this how / I live / I wanted to say No / because the word repercussionIt is a surprising word to be asked about The roses / devour the flesh The rose fleshes of carnations Alien blue / light in the devour / The word Absorb has suddenly / become impossible says N in the early sunflowers / It makes me feel / I’m only a reaction / a state of recoiling / a state of retching / What is a consequence Who is a consequence How does she live But Repercussion is a word / I need I need / a question about the stretch between I need a question put tenderly and suddenly towards The stretch between organized throbbing and what can fray / The red silk falls to the ground and nothing grounds over it / it converts it There is a commute

What is a consequence Who is a consequence I’m ashamed of what I can imagine and what I cannot / A starving girl must say Yes to Repercussion / because I don’t think giving word and feeling to the starving girl / to the bleeding body I don’t think a hard look that may go on is about resistance / A cut is not untouched A cut proliferates distorts proliferation / I don’t think her refusal / was or is about leaving any part of the world This is what memory really is / my loved men bodies She ground over it / Repercussion / A complicated integration in the early sunflowers / The starving girl She asks not to be momentary She asks to speak / The starving girl / She said Yes / She says Yes so she or the world could / see could listen to / all the room in B’s questions I am reactive I am flinching or free There is the phrase that doesn’t go on but then there is the surprising word and the girl Flesh of carnation Who folded in on herself so that her thinking / her pain could be exactly as private as it was public / What is a consequence Who is a consequence

 

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I didn’t have a regular period A form of oil in their bodies until I was 25 And even then…What happened? What happens to me? This writing is private It’s Overgrown
It’s an invitation / to read what can’t be read What I can’t write The Blood Barn It is hard to write after it To write after What couldn’t have happened but does happen A form of oil The Blood Barn is their bodies The Inexpressible / Red Garnet Menstruation Ketchup Ember We have sex and / joke about it hitting the sides / of my Ketchup / bottle hitting the sides of My desire to kill / U hitting the sides of My desire to kill / the reverence which covers all women / “You look nice with your hair down” “Your shoulders look burnt” “Did you hurt your wrist hitting men?” “I wish” How is a citation, something you’ve never read, a thing you are reading This writing / is private This writing / is public It is a cave It is a petty grove / IT IS A WISH The Inexpressible /A Red Gladiolus / Is it a PEEL / ? Doesn’t it PEEL / ? A note a long pause Length: It is color but it is also fur Unravelling and arranged It needed a fire to release

 

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the girl Flesh of carnation Who folded in on herself so that her thinking / her pain could be exactly as private as it was public

She asks me questions that take a long time to answer.

 

/ ?

? /

/ ?

 

**********************************************************************************

 

What is anorexia to the girl?

 

**********************************************************************************

 

How did you emerge?

How did you live?

How do you continue?

Who are you when we are not each other together?

Who alive would

Who alive would

Who alive would

Who alive does mind her?

 

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I touched the ketchup bottle last night and remembered how I used to measure out exactly how many servings I had eaten. I felt how I used to write it down / how close I kept those details / how I tried to warm them.

I touched the ketchup bottle / the red ice cube between us / I felt how long it will take to write this to myself / to push for this space.

 

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What turns the phrase that doesn’t go on? What softens it? I had a small amount of time left in England. I had been in the library for months. I had barely spoken to anyone for months. Everyday I showed the guard my empty pockets. Everyday I could only take pencils into the archive. I had a small amount of time left in England. A photo in the wind. A photo at Stonehenge shows excess / in my jeans / in the wind. I remember buying pumpkin seeds, barfi / a forest green diamond in East London. I remember buying a tent from a French girl. I remember buying a backpack from a French girl. The last of the money went / to a French girl and a bus. L agreed to go with me to Scotland, agreed to walk 96 miles with me on / The West Highland Way. We left excess, clothes and a suitcase, at a nightclub in North London. L had made friends with a singer who was born at a truck stop. He sang and gave us space for excess. A photo of me washing my clothes in a bathtub. A little bit of blood on a shirt. The excess in L’s boots / made her walk bleed. Taking the route in this direction keeps the sun from a body’s eyes. N texts me this morning, “I hope there will be a whole series of books by women all called The Hermit that aren’t explicitly linked,” and I think, putting my hand or / the center of a flower / on pain, “That is what it feels like to write this.” I also think, “That is the title of the body.” The Hermit / The Blood Barn / the poem that gets seen and unseen again A swell A body not explicitly linked. The food stuck in its throat. We walked and I felt relief. It wasn’t numbness / I felt nothing / but shape, the life of it. I ate but I had an explicit need / direction / an explicit movement across the silent comfort of difficult land, difficult animal. Cereal and peanut butter for the first time in months or years. Sleep on the ground and in the middle of sheep or cows. A boat in black water. A calmness about it, an envelopment. A night so cold we slept in the showers / of a campground. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight Red sky in the morning, sailor’s take warning, said the young man who handed us each a tall beer. I have always been disciplined. I have always been able to push the body that is also The Boiling Forest / my mind. I cut my hair so I could walk back and forth. I cut into my body so I could walk back and forth. I never thought I would write about this, about making this decision to walk and to cut. The great broken heart tucked in that was also not broken, but Blank and also opening. What turns the phrase that doesn’t go on? What softens it? Bones and blood erupt How is the memory of / an eating disorder also part of / the red gate lurching. The girl faces freedom and it is excruciating.Are shitting flowers / Is a phrase / Is a word that goes on / a typical intervention. Do they take us out or do they take us out. I cut my hair so I could walk back and forth. I cut into my body so I could walk back and forth. I walked to the edge of the mountain and went forward. I stood at the top of a mountain called Ben Nevis with the Germans I’d met. I stood at the top and thought about what is both black and green about the mountain, a mountain or the shining body / of a thing that flies. They asked me what it felt like to come all this way without boots.

 

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I put the food in the garbage and put dish soap on top it.

I put the food down the shower drain.

 

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What stops / an Earth a Cosmos the terrestrial drama / of remembrance /
a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns /
a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a
a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns / a body of little suns I cut a body into
I would say The secrets of great combustions / seen and unseen again Who are you /

when I say / I’m afraid to hear myself talking about singing myself?

Who was I / when we were not / each other together?

A non-living World / or a ceremony I would say I did live as a ceremony

/ a sequence with Raw Mango /

 

*

I would say I want to give you / what I remember,
I would say that I remember what happened

/ that I don’t

/ do I translate
so does my body”

*

I remember calling my mother / Unable / to remember how

/ to eat the food,
/ a Raw Mango
/ a little sun
I cried holding / the food I couldn’t feel 
A fruit / I couldn’t eat / on the couch
I stunned myself / I didn’t realize how
successful I’d become / 

I made myself so able to forget
/ I had made myself

few women ever experience themselves as real
few women ever experience themselves as real
few women ever experience themselves as real
few women ever experience themselves as real
few women ever experience themselves as real

*

I thought this would be like an essay
but in my life / I’ve never written prose

*

I don’t mostly cry
and so pay for having been
myself A girl A bruised
ecstatic starvation Mostly
as a dream hole I feel I lived

other kindness dangerously another / A woman She could be unreal /

crumpled Tulip
Mostly I lift my shirt and look at
a workshop on revenge,
the lyric, ekphrasis,
my first class on literary theory,

a workshop on obsessing the line As unreal /
crumpled Tulip, a workshop on being tangled
up, over thrown, more volatile and

trailing / rose-like   
clusters

*

It’s summer and everyone is writing
on a small paper The Truth the Dead Know

It is June. I am tired of being brave. I lift
my shirt and only ever see

a workshop / the body / cut into little suns nobody
asks a question about it / the body could forget
how to eat / It could not forget the word is a hard look that may go on / and so,

hunger stayed / a small century
/ a ceremony inexpressible / or skinning

me alive in a garden

“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing”

“so does my body”

*

I’m ashamed of what I can imagine and what I cannot /
A starving girl must say Yes to Repercussion / because I don’t think giving word
and feeling to the starving girl / I don’t think a hard look that may go on
is about resistance / A cut is not untouched / I don’t think her refusal / was or is
about leaving any part of the world This is what memory really is /
my loved bodies She ground over it / I am deliberately watching
the transcriptions from inside me /

*

I am deliberately watching the transcriptions from inside me /
A bouquet of tulips trailing Rose-like / clusters I have known

this book since I was young / and this sentence:
Something about this writing is traitorous

to all narratives
that continue to be projected upon it  /

*

The first time I read from The Blood Barn /
I said it while it was unfinished

while it could be unreal / crumpled Tulip
in a dream hole Does it require belief?

A display and a direct address A pre document and shame /
I’m upset talking about singing myself talking about singing myself /

*

N describes hearing me read it / as a novel / Listening
to The Blood Barn / It felt like a novel, he says /

 

I touch my odd gray skirt I can’t gather it It is physically impossible I am not in my original state I thought it would be an essay / but in my life I’ve never written prose/
I described to N knowing / before I wrote poems / that I would never write poems /
What are you / writing? What are we / writing? What kind of space does it take?

A phrase that doesn’t go on What happened to the lyric? These questions / my body
hurt A novel A woman / answering questions says, A sense of self that is already there. There’s no language or mark for leaving a trace of it. Someone who is truly rooted in life isn’t writing novels, a woman /asking questions says. She isn’t writing novels but she is

What is this if not / hers

*

I am not in my original state, I think when I finish reading The Blood Barn. 

*

///////When I am not finished writing / I am thinking

///////of how much / we hate all the forms that women take

///////We hate all the forms bodies suffer from / or make possible

///////for themselves

///////We hate everything that happens to them

///////“How much of my life is spent / reminding myself of my life,”

///////says A in writing I spend reading

///////When I am not finished writing / I am thinking

///////I will never be able to gather it / my life / poetry

///////but I will be surrounded by it

*

For the marathon, I had to wear a costume / I remember for the marathon / The Blood Barn / the pain in my hip dressed as a run on sentence / It PEELS AND PEELS / I pinned a sign to my back / I woke up early and wrote in the darkness / I pinned a sign to my back that said:

 

I RAN THIS MILE AND THEN I RAN ANOTHER MILE AND THEN I RAN ANOTHER MILE AND THEN I RAN ANOTHER MILE AND THEN I RAN AND I RAN AND I RAN I RAN ANOTHER MILE AND I RAN AND I RAN THIS MILE AND I RAN THIS MILE AND I WILL RUN ANOTHER MILE AND I WILL RUN AND I WILL RUN AND I RAN AND I RAN THIS MILE AND I WILL RUN ANOTHER I RUN I RUN A MILE AND THEN I RUN I RAN A MILE I RAN THIS MILE AND I WILL RUN ANOTHER AND ANOTHER AND I RUN I RUN THIS MILE I CAN RUN THIS MILE AND THEN I RUN ANOTHER AND ANOTHER I RUN AND RUN AND RUN AND RUN AND RUN.

 

I am not in my original state ////

This will never look like a poem
/ to you / or end

*

I ran until my hip was nothing but scar tissue and a doctor / telling me to try eating butter / to try putting a vague feeling / or prayer at the end of this poem. My uneven body, a small curve in my spine / in my root I might never have felt except that I tried to run / to be a sentence / a word / a hard look that couldn’t end / That is still here with My beautiful friend J My beautiful body was here My beautiful friend / My beautiful body Who can bear it. I remember lying on the floor next to a bowl of oatmeal I couldn’t remember how to touch my body to / and a woman holding me. I have always called it The Blood Barn / The starving / ecstatic teenage girl / a student about to be 20 / An attempt that was never vain / Would you describe her as vain? Would you still describe her painful body / as clearly pleading for your help / Is her presence such / a distraction /I am flinching or free / the girl Flesh of carnation / Who folded in on herself so that her thinking / her pain could be exactly as private as it was public Would you still describe her as a painful body / that didn’t do anything but try / to be desirable? / What if it was an attempt to be a force a secret moving apart / An attempt to say, No, I will not move through the world as desirable / a body of little suns I cut a body into little suns There was thick dark hair on my armsA violent achievement of feeling / I wanted to be alive someplace else /

When I began The Blood Barn, I wanted to write someplace else / the poem / You  “writing poems, an employee” don’t know how much it shows you / You don’t know how much my body shows what it holds Does it require belief? / I want to be able to write about how this saved / my life It is inexpressible / my body’s capability I am a citizen of this garden  / Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book  / = a haunt sort of girl.

 

What is anorexia to the girl? When I began / The Blood Barn, I knew I was writing about how emotion / trauma / illness / every sentence has moved or does moves through this body / What it does to acknowledge what happens / to create a word / out of a phrase / out of shitting flowers / for what does go on.

*

But how it felt, / what I came to feel while writing this surprised me / It displaced me.

*

Not long after I read The Blood Barn out loud and unfinished, I read Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts and spent time thinking about the presence of her mother. Who is a consequence / What is consequence Not long after I read The Blood Barn out loud and unfinished, the tendons in my wrist swelled and suddenly hurt. Are you still / where you were living? What kind of space does it take?

I don’t know my body but am fabulously intimate with my body. I don’t know my body but I’ve come to see, in this writing, that recovery isn’t the form I commit and commit to / that isn’t going to touch what exists there / what is needed to continue / To move a hurt cardinal out of the road when before / you didn’t. I don’t know my body but feel angry when Maggie Nelson describes her mother / a woman who refuses to eat / and it feels like I’m supposed to think she’s the weak little body / A desperation. I don’t disagree I remember /

A desperation / buying diet pills + People magazine at CVS with a credit card / running seventy miles a week / A bitch w/ hips so tight they turn down and 2 the left in excess A bitch passing out reading Women in Love / A bitch rubbed raw / scrubbing the puke out of her bedroom carpet at her parents’ house / after I had to pretend to eat. But is this the center / pity + a thinness / a narrative for the presumed body / that predictably succumbs / ?? / to obliteration / via maleness + heterosexual fever / ?? / to pulling her blood / her secret / her inside as close to an exposed surface as possible / ?? /

What saves her / I don’t know my body but am fabulously intimate with my body / I know a power / that hates bodies and I could I live in fear of seeing myself / my body but I still want to insist / None of this works for me None of this is / me, a narrative. Not long after I read The Blood Barn out loud and unfinished, I held my wrist and knew I was writing this / I held my wrist and knew I was feeling this / What is a descendant of sensitivity? A swell and a poem about a secret / other kindness dangerously another so I could experience her / a woman as real / I put my body against it and I move apart there / How is a citation, something you’ve never read, a thing you are reading / a girl.

 

 

Question: What is poetry? Why do you write it?

a)

To trace multiple accounts of the word.

To trace how the word impels or impales the body / the flower.

As things spill over.

As density is unloaded.

As rhythm is unloaded, rhythm strays.

As rhythm strays, it realigns with the tilt of the cave / of the mouth.

To repeat yourself.

To repeat someone else.

To repeat but mean something else.

To repeat what is unquotable.

To find language unquotable.

To use language anyway.

To experiment / to trace the urgency which impels or impales.

To render absence.

How to render absence.

How to be a protrusion.

To wear a headdress despite the absence / protrusion felt.

To be a pug in a headdress.

To be a cliff in a headdress.

To wrap the hair in yarn.

To wrap the hair in wound.

To wrap the hair in caves.

To wrap the hair in flowers.

To warp.

To consider violation / violence / volition / vividness.

To ask / what it is to describe.

What it means. How it means.

To be haunted by description / its possibility.  

To ditch (in) the throat, to mispronounce it.

To feed.

To see it floral / love.

How to speak. How to utter.

 

b)

The Devil inside me / The Flower inside me

 

What happened to the lyric?

 

Have you ever felt safe in your body?

No.

 

*

This isn’t the story of a girl.

This is a girl who saw purple, then green, then orange, then sea foam, then navy.

crumpled Tulip in a dream hole Does it require belief?

*

 

*

When I began The Blood Barn, I had begun seeing a chiropractor because the pain in my hip, a pain that began during the peak of anorexia, had returned. A scar tissue, a hard dead fog.

Then, every way I was looked at and examined revealed nothing. Then, a hard dead fog rubbed me and rubbed me and soaked me doctors rubbed me and rubbed me with therapists and butter and shots of cortisol and electrical pulses soaked me until I left the country and did something like not turn away from my body / with feeling.

I have not seen my body since any of this happened, but I do feel it. A big dead fog or a ghost or my remains looking at me or a girl falling down in the snow. What is a consequence? Who is a consequence?

*

It’s been almost a year since I began The Blood Barn and now, the chiropractor, who has the same name as a poet, she holds my wrist / a hard dead fog doctors rubbed with braces and butter / she holds my wrist / the one I melted a red ice cube on / She holds my wrist and says, It’s travelled hasn’t it.

I work to not cry every time I speak with her. Not because I’m sad / but because I’m often overwhelmed at the amount of feeling we are able to exchange when we’re close in proximity and attention. I can’t often say what those feelings even are / what they are attached to for each of us / I don’t know her I can only acknowledge it / Am I even a poet.

I leave work to go somewhere else / I leave work where my body is told to hold it and hold it and hold it / I leave work as the girl possessed and eating an orange/ I leave work in August / having just turned 30 / the weak little body strong as life strong as violets / having never turned away from trying / to understand how this poem is changing citation / narrative / healing / a physical means for me.

Do you live in a state of repercussion?

I let a red ice cube melt on my wrist and I decide to go to a myofascial release therapist named Carl Another C / A desperation / but one meant to give language to my body / instead of to this poem / to any poem.

The man A kind of oval / An odd witness A kind body / Another C / holds my wrist / presses my sternum / presses my ears and moves it apart there / the fascia the entire spread of Her massive tissue / recombines or melts there into the weak little body’s flinches / strong as life strong as violets / I come home

and lay my hand on my stomach and tell N that I will never write poems / but I will lay my hand on my stomach and for the first time / feel something there like presence / like touching / my body as it is / I come home and lay my hand on my stomach and tell N the question I need / a question put tenderly and suddenly towards / by Another C

Have you ever felt safe in your body?

The girl faces freedom and it is excruciating. I’m terrified this / the way I construct something / the activity in my body a form / is unlistenable / unreadable / I can only write here / I can only never write poems / that are poems my body here / strong as life strong as violets To move a hurt cardinal out of the road when before / you didn’t.

 

Notes
-What precedes this poem / Surprising Carnations + Fish = Book / was written by Jared Joseph.

-“If we’re going to heal / let it be glorious” and “1,000 girls raise their arms” appear in Beyoncé’s Lemonade.
 
-“Yes, I deserve a spring–I owe nobody nothing” comes from Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary.

-Thank you to Brandon Shimoda for asking me questions after reading The Book of Repulsive Women.  

-To create the page that says PEEL, I took a photograph of one of the pages in Jean-
Michel Basquiat’s journals and traced, in red, what had first been written in black. Basquiat’s journals were on display as part of an exhibit called, “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” at the High Museum of Art Atlanta.

-The photo from Instagram is of Anna Betbeze's "Nine Planets in the Dark House"
(2015), which was at the High Museum of Art Atlanta.

-Reading Aimé Césaire and Etel Adnan helped me reach “I cut a body into little suns.”

-“few women ever experience themselves as real” was inspired by Andrea Dworkin’s Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics. Elanor McInerney is the reason I read it.

-A line from Anne Sexton’s “The Truth the Dead Know” appears.

-Reading Alice Notley’s “Songs for the Second Unborn Baby,” and the poem, “30th Birthday,” helped me complete this poem.

-Thank you Ginger Ko + Raquel Salas-Rivera for being the reason I was able to first read one of The Blood Barns out loud. Thank you for your poems.

-Photos of my (injured) wrist / other hands w/ red ice cubes comes from a workshop I led through Lost in the Letters on my 30th birthday. Thank you Stephanie Dowda + Scott Daughtridge.

 

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1. Reading @ desk: “Language is Migrant” by Cecelia Vicuna @ Harriet on April 21, 2016.