I dreamed that I was in South Carolina, and all the pine trees turned red.

I dreamed of wires, connecting us.

I dreamed that the insides were all fur, nothing but.

&now (&later)

one of the things about going places is that you never go to as many places as you want to or do as many things as you want to do. At &now I talked about women and animals and presented research into my question: are they real? Wondering now if I could/should have talked about the different ways to get to that question. I realized, listening to folks discussing metaphor, that so many things are already so deconstructed in my mind that I often have to reconstruct and/or remember them to follow the conversation. Like the thing about language and metaphor. I kept thinking...but *all* words are metaphor. The word "bench" is bound to a bench, not because the material of bench-ness emanates a particular, specific word, but because that word gets made and bound to it and conventionally associated with it and its like this semiotic conjugation as all signs are conjugations, multiples. And so, for me, asking about whether things are "real" is this very layered, multiplied question. Part of what I wish I had said has to do with the connection between "reality" and the construction of knowledge -- a critique, really, of the subject/object relationship, or empiricism. It's also a question about mutuality...not a mirror, but a "being with" that, independent of anything else, honors the manifestation of the many materials and selves that are always plastic, always changing, but may be perceived, held, engaged...and the question is how we create/enter that moment, that engagement, and whether or not this is some version of the real.

of being underwater. of error. of swimming and craft. an elastic wanting...a drift...an ink black wave or spill...tipping upwards. in our sand-buildings, our little huts. I feel like laughing, but I can't.

I am like a full moon in my belly. I don't want anyone to die. the feral things -- it's all our fault. During the day you can't see in and a night you can't see out. the moon hangs like an axe, a sad axe, an unfinished question. we abandon our companions and open wounds, prisons. we say get a grip but we mean let go.

The Poetry Booth

On Sunday, we went to Los Angeles and staged The Poetry Booth near the corner on Sunset and Western. This was part of the Los Angeles Road Concerts. It was a really good day.

www.flickr.com mdetorie's Poetry Booth | Sunset Blvd. | Los Angeles Road Concerts | Sept. 18, 2011 photoset

In my mermaid eye, I

become an eyelid. lidded

glass in the little waves -- skip, skip -- the heart

has it's two halves, it's beloveds, those

internalized twins of kissing. Who

will whisper, pine siskins zipping

threads for trees, little whiskers

on the hillside, over ever water.

All along, I wondered. Your eyes

don't look at me. I mean: Don't

look at me! How raw to be seen --

to be realized. Once I was invisible:

I wanted to be seen. But now I think -- NO!

Let me let you look at me. Let me.

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

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.

I am an infected text

feralscape