{Saturday joy at Stain}

Fully embracing my creature-of-habit-ness, I carry myself and Roger's laptop down the street to Stain the bar/coffeeshop where last Saturday I spent hours and hours and got much done, including the Joan/hooker poem. Aside from an inadequate quantity of fans and complete lack of air conditioning, it's a fabulous little spot and with a few hours and three cups of tea, poems seem to come here. Exciting. And Rebecca and I are going to put together a show to do here relatively soon.

Roger's show is tonight so I should get back and try to be a useful lifemate and stage manager before I go get a haircut.

Here is today's Stain poem:

pantoum for the found
(or: a good feminist wouldn’t watch so much Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit)

flatbacked against the wall, her hands curl into birds
registering the embodiment of the problem set
a circled wagon, torn lingerie, holocaust gaze
refusing to perform the magic of the fetish.

registering the embodiment of the problem set
misdemeanor of the body, owing everything,
refusing to perform the magic of the fetish
she turns, becomes the wall, eats her way in.

misdemeanor of the body, owing everything
to a jaundiced mirror, a funhouse moon,
she turns, becomes the wall, eats her way in.
all this, for you, the last critic, the peeled eye.

to a jaundiced mirror, a funhouse moon
declaring its own artifice, her psychic decentering
: all this for you, the last critic, the peeled eye
suturing the distance between body and the wall it reiterates.

declaring its own artifice, her psychic decentering
begs and begs the look, posits formlessness in subjectivity.
all this for you, the last critic, the peeled eye
pinning the frog’s bellyflesh back; this is a study.

begs and begs the look, posits formlessness in subjectivity,
the geometrical point of origin, her ruined fists
pinning the frog’s bellyflesh back; this is a study
in not-death, in evisceration without incision, look.

the geometrical point of origin, her ruined fists
talons, declawed, defanged, is she aggressive
in not-death, in evisceration without incision, look
she’s asking for it, she is the wall, and what’s a wall for.

talons, declawed, defanged, is she aggressive
enough for you? plaster and drywall, breakfast,
she’s asking for it, she is the wall, and what’s a wall for
if not to feed the eye, the master’s gaze, don’t look away.

enough for you, plaster and drywall, breakfast,
an unladylike hunger, specimens don’t exist
if not to feed the eye, the master’s gaze, don’t look away
out of aesthetic or feminist theoretical concerns.

an unladylike hunger, specimens don’t exist
(circled wagon, torn lingerie, holocaust gaze)
outside of aesthetic or feminist theoretical concerns.
flatbacked against the wall, her hands curl into birds.

*

(Lines 2, 4, 14, 16, 18, 22, 36 are taken wholly or in part from “Francesca Woodman’s Interruption” by Kaira Marie Cabañas, published in Critical Matrix, volume 13, number 1, 2002.)