Forthcoming in Vestiges_07: Catachresis
I’m not sure, grasshopper
I’m not sure who I am anymore
whispers the grasshopper ahead of
some quake in the forehead
forest of fenestration
beneath lead piping
pourage covering the opening of the drain
acreage in the hay bail
holy maceral covered in mulch
the slides slipped past too fast for the forest to surface
or the ocean was a leg of lamb some giant
hurled towards the wall of a lobotomy
you came covered in sad sap
inside teardrop rainforest rot and rubber
miles of mud and rust lining the surfaces
earth as is
underlining the emergency
we called too late
as in a hollow
return of the ancients
enchant enchanté
the Parisian sway over tides of rock chain link fence simple code dialect inside the plastic tooth treasure box the old papers with the old passwords lines of numbers memorized as in lockers
hunting over and through
you don’t have to speak
you barely speak
looking with something other than your hands or your eyes
your own face an echo ball
quiet findings
earthbound
sucked into the moss
into the bricks lining the passageway
with the names of the ones
who reclaim their passage
in this time
boundless enterprise
do you suck the face of/f little earthly delight
peeled from the wrapper
wrapper in the entrails of enterprise
wisdom as in wishing for
a room as hollow as
a box shipped to your living room
to fulfill a vision of what is sacred
it was cold and grey and we went fishing
and the fisherpeople praised my child
who caught a fish small and almost still
and released it
and the visions of cattails
now growing released in the backyard
the later book called the bulbs grow
a new recording
unearthed birdcall
to be home home from school home hurtling home home as in forever home hollow we await the ones we, we we were earth thirst read
red as in clay lay this day away
loan pay ay for a way
far away
we say
go
be
my own love we are with you
One light beam one fox
The end of the story reveals chaos
Peels through the end of designated time
Could be burdened into
Burrowed into
Then repeat
An edge of blanket
A sack for laundry
Moving billboard
You see your timestamp fade
Just fading away from fun
Filtered materiality
Given a platform some speak of liberation
Say Not complicit
Towards caution
Film eye(d)
Home as a place of always chores
Tasks of things to do
One after another towards completion
One feels a swarm of entropy
The mother tries to create joy
But is exhausted
Estuary
Continuation
Be or at have from
Be or at have from repetition of linear reasoning one guest speaks into micraptorphone recycled belief claw line tangent of entropy polyanalaze eyes for days closed like lizards whispers of elation chime of calendar away from online entity official language vs corruption charge nomination picks encircled timeshares quiet as a turtle beckons building like a lawn like a lion’s curled tongue breath in frost cup window of bus or what sharp thing is between your fingers and who is calling out to you and what is your time taking you to and when will we whisper something truer than an ocean of undertaking current to be home or alive or tallying by paper faster than the maker than the record
Child asks me to type my name
when the letters don’t mix
what the jokes entail entrails or reading homework
collision trick joke play unraveling
details of arrangement
one wanders through
an enterprise floods rooftop step stones
myopic missionary pos
sibility
piston turn your attention towards
gnat seedlings feeding on the watery soil
with a loss of autonomy autonomic systematic enterprise
how to turn technology
through campaign donation reroute easy maneuver to fraud
watch diamond extraction screen
naming the view of a face extracted car bomb or city
financed by financial wizard expense report
price of an elaborate detonation
pager wager of family gold plated panels
assassination throughout the ages
family reunion hit mark
if one imagines the ones in view
smell of oatmeal
smell of sugary charge
quilted seismic tower
one grandma quilted the towers is how it begins
whom did she gift it to? what was she saying?
did it sell? was she viral? what else did she create?
nothing
a series of nos
a forest of plainstyle
displaced from buffer quantity
how one uses a photographic lens burial
of the island’s crocodile
one goes back to sleep before the bus arrives
mutual one wonders what to trust
when
qr code stamp time denial
highways closed into
waking serially
hours before needed
—
Christina Vega-Westhoff is a poet, translator, performer, and educator living in Buffalo, New York. She is the author of Suelo Tide Cement (Nightboat Books, 2018). Her writing and translations have appeared in Best American Experimental Writing, Emergency INDEX, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Her recent performance work includes dancing in pieces by Rosalie Jones, Nancy Hughes, and Stephen Koplowitz and choreographing and directing Aerial Ode for the Trees. She teaches aerial dance at The Bird’s Nest Circus Arts.