notice what you notice when you notice it

Notice a tree.  Write about it.

Bark  infected like homeless mother’s limbs with skin weathered from winter and bed bugs. 

Go outside.  Write about it.

I stare at an open field and search for the bodies held captive by tall wheat or poison ivy.

Visit amusement park for children called zoo.  Write about it.

 

I see an elephant and describe its skin as heated crust. I count each fracture disrupting the smooth. I call it monster call it mammal of wild grey call it me in the evening when enough bodies have rubbed against me to feel bloated and heavy, a swell of weight.

Climb up staircase of memories in body. Question what needs to be questioned.

 

Why do humans violent away their childhoods?

 

 (instruct)

search urgency

     

Treat body like leftover supper and microwave toward normal

 

(an urge)

I want to remember the days when nothing occurred.

to be no(body)

I once poured milk all over my body for a performance. I cannot recall its intentions, but it led me toward another bout of lactose intolerance or another love affair– I cannot remember which. It was thick and the smell remained for hours post-scrub. From the corner of my dairy-drenched eyes, I noticed a human wearing blond dreadlocks, inconsistent knots spewing out of her scalp or brain. She had to be a visitor, I thought. No one exists like this anymore, I thought.

*
Sacrifice can be found in early morning wake up calls to clean up beaches swarmed by devastation. Blame the wind this time. Blame the humans who do not recycle, who do not chew before swallowing, who do not cook their food properly, who kill without concern, who focus too much on Facebook, rather than faces and books…next time.

To be no(body) is to swarm a room without a notice. To flap wings known as arms, all scratched out like liner notes. To bend knees and straighten and bend and straighten until thighs are hardened like soul. To be able to notice a man whose belly breathes outside of himself, sitting in the corner with his shirt untucked, with his thoughts all slurred. To be no(body) is to stare without being asked to stop.

*
Mourning in the morning looks like this: cup of coffee to my right, Bon Iver all around me like dead skin cells floating (which I cannot see, but feel like ghosts landing). Sunrise pushing light against the leaves outside my window. There is rust on those leaves. I want to lick them to feel oxidation gather inside me.

*
When I speak (lately), only lies come out.

A truth: After the hurricane, I collected corpses. Leaf corpses. They were light enough to carry home. To press inside Audre Lorde’s book of essays. Their veiny ends popped out and yesterday, I carefully rescued them from compression and noticed their colors. Blotted red. Red like forty-seventh layer of earth from below not red like my hair. One is yellow like hydrated urine. One is spotted green.

*
I once poured soil all over my body for a performance, with thin plastic tarp below me to catch the earthworms. I wanted my filth to be visible. So I mashed the dirt into my skin. Forced it beneath my fingernails. Rubbed it into my hair. I swallowed it. The grit remained inside undetected cavities. Sand and rocks and organic additives. Then I took a sponge, waiting in water, and wiped it all away. My body became mud. A puddle of sludge. My bones were a stage of earth and water. I was nude and more honest than I had ever been before.

*
Sometimes when I breathe, planets blurt out.

replace leftovers with newovers

a collaged cut-up:

A name inside the book: I had forgotten I could hang onto the hook curled into its beginning. Just dangle. (Her) love just dangles. When upside down, blood spells out solutions.

*

It is only upon closer inspection that one notices there are no teeth in her smile. So her face collapses like that building. So her cheeks have nowhere else to go but inward. So her chin hides beneath her nose, which collects wrinkles like childhood secrets

*

If one lifts one’s skirt, it is to show one’s memory. I keep my calendars between my legs. There is a holiday behind my knee and you may find a semi-molded mammal beneath all that hair. Don’t you want to ask what that lump is? Don’t you want to know why I must call it something else to survive its history?

*

Embodying both the earth and the violence of its everyday breathing pattern. It’s arms are floatation devices. When the earth coughs out catastrophe, be closest to its palms; they will save.

*

There are no women who carry my blood. Each one has left due to diagnosis, border patrol, madness, sexual deviance, long-distance, diet, fatigue, loss of appetite, loss of sexual drive, disgust, disappointment, distrust…(or are these just the symptoms?)

————–
*well, aren’t these all just symptoms?