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laura ferris

Picture


Karen, The Little Match Seller
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
 


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
Critical Theory Playlist
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.
Lucy Ashton Lately
Option: You had one job. It’s too late for you
Option: Begin 
at the base
of the shaft.
 
Option: Scream into the other one’s
I WANT YOU TO HAVE EVERYTHING


Option: Marionette 
through the day.
Option: Not mine. 

Option: Sisters who aren’t sisters.       
Option: Learn Italian
Option: Blow up memory into a 
shadow animal pinning you to the bed 
or the floor or the ground.
Option: He comes into the constellation
body of my mind as private rehearsal.

Option: Mine
Option: Ocultarme en la California sintáctica 
de mi imaginario infantil.



Option: Romance language.
                                                          Option: “Dead girls aren’t using their voices anyway.”

 
Option: Disarticulate body installation in mind. Not yours.
Option: I want you to have everything.


Option: Learn French.


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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