Forthcoming in Vestiges_04: Aphasia
∇ ⊗ ∇
I get to re-experience
a fly bouncing
off the walls
equivalency began
each time I swell
a cloud or angel
evoked off-hand
I don’t think I would
separate myself
accept love sad art
unanswered
how it is
I can’t read today
it’s harrowing
my hoarding
landmine name horizon
I keep everything together
my teeth parting
and time passed well
translations
parallel
boundless
I’ve needed to step away
and what to call
my wildness
my gestural caretaker sky
one day old and already
the time lapse sequence
makes nests, teeters
I love monologuing rips
seeing what people
demand truth of
how everyone lives
in a polyphonic wound
grief – – –
the subject of grief
I listened so much
while I drafted quickly
what each syllable
can do
to play out
or let linger
∇ ⊗ ∇
I used to make
my alter ego
use poetry
when she wanted
ordinary waking
life over
with
cities
as real as
hours
I have seen you
a spectacle
of cynical
time
in some ways
it’s my stillness
that schisms
the target
we call you
in your material
form
let’s offer up
a sheet
of blank paper
I present to you
a sheet of
paper blank
background noise
the disconnected
delirium
I’m still in it
no leaders
no satellite image
there’s this dog
in the corner
I’m watching his
behavior
and I understand
it as
an all-over
end of day mood
was the dog
an important figure
to you
for confronting
repetition
what is this place
I present to you
this typewriter
this personal ad
for a typewriter
that I’m building
piercing
I want to be a spy
∇ ⊗ ∇
dear little whomp whomp
I wanted to make a book
to say some things
and suppress others
to recreate my
vengeance
so I can enjoy it too
greedy little whomp circumstance
I freak out
I don’t feel guilty
all I want is to freak out more
let my face
occupy this whole room
what interests me is
our attitudes toward
a work of love
if a nurturing work
ethic ever yields
my younger self says hi
here she is coming down the staircase
I was able to do real work then
stopping there on the stairs
it occurred to me
a figure at the entrance
the basic idea of an opening
∇ ⊗ ∇
why do you use the city
like it’s your story
one minute
operational
attuned
find a way into everybody
another the first person
accurate
deforming
burns down
anything is tone
freeing the violence of the structure
a sculpted airport ghost-edge town
another circling of events
the corner of your eye
and I am, oh god, an obscurity
socially emptying
the gesture where
essences crisscross
a flamed mass of
where am I going
I’m thinking about your GPS
its high notes
somehow language
the remainder
punishes me I just love
the threat of the voice
and how nonsense carries
off impulse, sings it
this didn’t happen
alone in the asylum
I ended up teaching myself
the skull
divinity
my attraction
to the world’s ventriloquism
how I want to live it all out
in the grocery store
implore the gods
to restrain themselves a little
atrophy cuddled with light
so I wrote this breaking and direct
stranded fringe figure
on the lunar floor
of torn up visions
yes, I’ll be singing soon
the driving kind of alive
and what was that like
I taught myself
this stumbling point
hanging out
in the middle of the street
like it’s a question or a stage
∇ ⊗ ∇
I mean
who the fuck are you
in theory
I undervalue myself
or society
right on time
says, “why don’t you
be star-struck
and get inside
why don’t you.”
why don’t you
young guy bumming
walk on out
of the tipsy
nightmare aesthetics
or just represent
live abroad
find it sexy
—
Anna Gurton-Wachter is a writer, editor, and archivist. Her first full-length book, Utopia Pipe Dream Memory, is forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2019, and her chapbooks include Spring Bomb (forthcoming from dancing girl press), Mother of All (above/ground press), The Abundance Chamber Works Alone (Essay Press), Blank Blank Blues (Horse Less Press), and CYRUS (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs). Other work has appeared in 6×6, PELT, No, Dear, Elderly, and elsewhere. She edits and makes books with DoubleCross Press, a poetry micro-press publishing handmade letterpress chapbooks, and lives in Brooklyn, NY, a few blocks away from the home in which she was born.