How much do you need to see to know that it is human? Color washed over movement synthesized mottled over colors a hand's border against an arm or cloth all lit up jolly rancher red and green the light and static sour and the girls so shy against their bangs the young hair moving in the shabby glow that says alive.

Haunted/Hunted

It's obvious: the whole
world is haunted. Consider
the disasters and broken
spaces, how inside we're
all broken up, a soup
of bits like plastics
in the ocean currents. Nothing
is really solid, is really
whole. We're what coheres, what
we create. It's how
we care that matters.
No life truly disappears:
we gather and relate, mark
edges and measure holes.
We've traveled through all
this time, all these years.
We're what accumulates.
We're them. Over and over again.

New Year

The days are not the same though

they feel that way. It is how I seem:

see-through, like a gun can trace

a line, a way to see. Seam from eye

to wheel, to a thread that frays

and turns to ink. Edge of a hole

where a paw marks the edge

of our map. A chart of stars

for a fur bird to make a course

through blue, black -- all the hues

we love to lack. Our lack is a fence

the same shade as grass. As glass

finds an eye, the mass of fur we track

comes blue and soft to us, in scraps.

in a fantasy I am fully manifest as animal -- whiskers to tail --licking my paw, sniffing the air.

it's like all I ever think about is fantasy, and animals, and how gender is a ghost and we're all haunted whether we like it or not

everything opens and closes

The Seasons Cemented

THE BOOKS ARE IN!!!


The Seasons Cemented
by Amanda Ackerman

Amanda Ackerman lives in Los Angeles where she writes and teaches. She is co-editor of the press eohippus labs. She is a member of UNFO (The Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization) and writes as part of SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS. Her collaborative book Sin is to Celebration has been recently released from House Press. Her work has also been published or is forthcoming in in flim forum: A Sing Economy, String of Small Machines, The Physical Poets, WOMB, Moonlit, Source Material: A Journal of Appropriated Text, and Area Sneaks.

Read a poem from this collection here: http://www.wombpoetry.com/skeins/ackerman.html

the inside becomes the outside

Today it rains. I am somewhat happy about this. The weather in Santa Barbara can be placid and monotonous. Or else the variations in weather are limited to rearrangements in the cloud cover/fog/marine layer. So rain. It's a thing. An event. It makes noise. Last night we both woke up when we heard something go crash in the house; this morning, I can't discern what could have fallen. Everything appears to be in its normal place. Rain also means the ants come trooping in. I've tried to herd them back outside, traced over their moving black lines with chalk, but they return. They are so numerous. Their stream flows in two directions. I'm not sure which way is in and which is out. I've been thinking of the simultaneity of surfaces -- like klein bottles and mobius strips.

Sometimes it is like I've been asleep for ten months and I'm just waking up. I've tapered down my medicine, and now I'm only taking half of a vicodin here and there. I'm still taking muscle relaxers at night and ibuprofen every six hours, so tapering down those will be the next frontier. I took a percocet on Friday, and consequently spent the rest of the weekend trying to clear the fog. I can't believe that I was taking SIX of those each day. One made me feel like a mummy -- as though my insides had been dehydrated and my outsides were wrapped in cloth.

Physical therapy is opening some new pains. I feel like I've been clinging to the edge of a cliff. I can't let go. But now I'm asking my body to let go, and it is taking a lot of work. I can think "relax relax relax," and yet the muscles remain as hard as rocks, the joints are stiff -- it's like tugging on a stuck door. The physical therapist said my strength was a 20% -- that I had the strength of an 80 year old woman. Before the injury I always imagined myself as strong, powerful. Now I must ask for help all the time. I feel self conscious because I think I must still look strong. I worry people will think "why does she need help." I probably need to let go of this too.

a world of edges and doors

corners and walls running along

running all night the turn

of a wheel & all motion

is the thing I want continuous

line without curves

angles and angles mapped

square by square I can

run all night I can sleep

all day I can find

the edge to run along

the arrival becomes

the return, re-

turn, turning.

some days are bright and sunny and it seems so easy to feel happy and optimistic. & it seems a little bit amazing that feeling happy and optimistic can be easy -- that it persists. the word it makes me think of is resilience.

I've been thinking about desire and fantasy, and thinking that desire is like a drive, is like vim. Desire as a site of possibility and health -- that to be in touch with one's desire is to be healthy. Like, wanting is good. This is different than thinking about desire as a lack. To me, right now, desire feels full.