here we enact a dream state. [day 12]

Postcard to MD

The people of this planet all have dreams to run away from. When you think something could be yours, you’ll swim into the sea. This happened to me too, in your future. Your pawn reminds me of my handheld quartz. Two doors leading to the same hallway and still having to choose. I didn’t know the cost of a glamor so they threw me the fuck out. This happens all the time. It’s so easy to fall for a city. You can eat eleven families of flowering plants, all in a day. You can adopt a swing to your vowels, talk their talk. I recall you grabbing their hair at the roots to circulate the blood, turn all your faces to the sun. You never bothered with the harlequin; I apologized all the time. I can’t say who was braver. But I wish you were here. Maybe we could’ve helped each other. In the beginning, at least I could’ve been your legs. 

Constructed from the work of Kimberly Alidio, Ching-In Chen, Jai Arun Ravine, Joan Roughgard (via Jai), Akilah Oliver (via Ching-In), Maya Deren’s ‘At Land’ (via Kim), and Nara Denning’s ‘Madalien the Small’ (possibly a retelling of ‘At Land?’).

Prompts:

‘Madalien the Small,’ 2008, d. Nara Denning

‘For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene.’—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Kimberly Alidio:   What phobia or craving transports you to a dream state?

Ching-In Chen:  because I can’t get over Akilah Oliver ….

in my own way there a was a time when i stumbled over a tense: says/said
now, bereft, in anticipation of how night collapses
into its own effluence i conjugate occasions, ask just for time, just a little
time to get love right

Jai Arun Ravine:    ”Is the body the place where the sentence ends?” - Akilah Oliver, from “a(A)ugust”. I don’t want her dead, but I understand.

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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.