rescue the living ephemera. [day 7]

Postcard to JGV

Attention commands what is holy. In a time of mirrors and soft speech

I bound myself to the book and all its refractions: child-body, dalaga-body,

cinephile, runaway, android, ghost. Equilateral with all future imaginary selves

because I’m still waiting for documentation. Is it haunted where you exist?

Sleepless in killing summer? I want to wake up on that island and reject all pleas

for explanation. I demand natural light, a hybrid dog, and a varied gastronomy.

The dog must be trained to call an ambulance. When I arrive, you must teach me

how to use a rose as weapon.

Constructed with words/intentions from Bushra Rehman, Kimberly Alidio, Ching-In Chen, Tamiko Beyer, and Jose Garcia Villa (via Eileen Tabios).

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Prompts

‘Tell me, what else should I have done? / Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?’—Mary Oliver

Bushra Rehman: The Fashions of 1830: A Further Degree of Perfection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Kimberly Alidio: “Things held and never understood.”

Ching-In Chen: “Nevertheless, reading these words, I can’t have them in my house. And so I open the door, flinching from the blue fire of the individual blades of grass, the bonds of the plant material that release a color when they are crushed. When the book hits the ground. A sub-red spike without a source.” - from Bhanu Kapil’s Schizophrene

Tamiko Beyer:

strange code

being old
far from friends
home

tongue turns
to stone

—Jeffery Yang, from Vanishing-Line

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Housekeeping

Please post in the comments section of this blog entry with: 1) your writing in response to today’s writing(s) and 2) a prompt or question to share for tomorrow.

And if the comments are down, feel free to send your work to arkipelagirl [at] gmail.com, and I’ll post for you when the comments are fixed.

Full info on the process and this project can be found at this page.