laura ferris
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Karen, The Little Match Seller |
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The facial expression is violent, sometimes tragic.
That is, calm—the conscious, developed calmness of acrobats. A professional smile—and voilà! Reappearing in the handmirror, rouged, eyes powdered. A space. A period. New line. I’ll start over. Claude Cahun, Aveux non avenus Je est un autre—un multiple toujours —I is another—and always multiple. Claude Cahun to someone |
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H.C. Elizabeth’s script did not rely on suspension of disbelief. I’d known this quite well
since I was a child, as my father would read from the great book at bedtime. What my readers have missed is the non-significance of interval in the fairytale. Of significance is what I recall having seen. — big Lucys tied up in boxes don’t like to be touched — human subjects make poor automated dancers — the mechanical dog balances a ball on his nose — does the doll see how she looks? LOOK |
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Critical Theory Playlist
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I had a daydream I’d become the surface of events you cry out to on the streets
after finishing a shift downtown, how you might manage with your old backpack as you take the last BART train beneath the Bay. If there’s a sympathetic texture to sequence that accompanies your routine like a playlist or an angel it can be me – my astral project – and it’s not that I’d like to follow you at work as much if I could give anything so your surroundings activate in concert with any wish for sanctuary that’s personal I would or that I never did return your Deleuze reader. I left it by mistake in a grocery bag of books meant for San Quentin before the Facebook millionaire lent you his car and we sold all my other books. I had a nightmare recently where you my most love dancer the critical theorist had lost the will to live in a house. You began to walk. I had left my body for California, hovered before you most my love and said you must turn back. Walking through me you my most and love found a sunny length of grass by the lake and lay down to sleep. I played today a boy I love stroked my eyebrows and licked my nose so light it wasn’t even sex. Recently I’ve wanted to be touched on the edges all soft and slow, and I know what I would die for. Who said anything about survivors or the woman I told you about. |
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Lucy Ashton Lately
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Option: You had one job. It’s too late for you
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Option: Scream into the other one’s
I WANT YOU TO HAVE EVERYTHING |
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Option: Marionette
through the day. |
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Option: Not mine.
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Option: Sisters who aren’t sisters.
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Option: Learn Italian
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Option: Blow up memory into a
shadow animal pinning you to the bed or the floor or the ground. |
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Option: He comes into the constellation
body of my mind as private rehearsal. |
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Option: Mine
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Option: Ocultarme en la California sintáctica
de mi imaginario infantil. |
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Option: Romance language.
Option: “Dead girls aren’t using their voices anyway.” |
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Option: Disarticulate body installation in mind. Not yours.
Option: I want you to have everything. |
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Option: Learn French.
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LAURA FERRIS is a poet and translator who works as a teacher and currently splits time between Iowa City and the East Bay. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in smoking glue gun magazine, Prelude, The Atlas Review, and Fence.
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