Tuesday, July 12, 2011

they take a polaroid of me
and hang it up

a woman, well-meaning, uses
a ruler to make lines, to divide
my body into parts

center line as my axis
my spine, my spindle

from there she can show me
where the hip curve is a letter off
where my waist should whittle

it was the day we had to wear leotards
mine was silver

everything felt crumpled like trash

Saturday, July 02, 2011

I'm gathering connections. I gather gather gather and this seems to be the only thing I am good at. I may not even be good at it; perhaps it is all I can do. My projects, all of them, take years, decades. the current project is at least ten years old, perhaps more. and then there is the research project, the question, and that is 35 years old. my earliest research was recorded by others, before I could write, or speak even. I can remember the way things touched, the way I felt. fogged yellow mirror glass and the tilted room with the brown carpet and the daybeds and my mother and the sound of soap operas clotting humidly against the fly-buzz of the summer screen. I only pretend to remember. I am remembered by it -- by the house, the titled photographs, recorded in the grooves of the warped vinyl. I cannot bear to hear burt bacharach without wanting to cry. such sour dishrag chords stuck together with sirens and melting vixens all stuffed with pills. This is also true of the Carpenters and Dione Warwick. It is the saddest music in the world.



Perhaps sad is not the right word. Oh, forget it, it's not. But I can't bear it. Not because it is bad, but because it makes me feel so intolerably uncomfortable. It's like 1977 is trapped in the colors and the air.
is this real?