excerpts from Leave Your Body Behind
Children are both full of lumine and ill. In my experience, the child you were is the one you kill. Take this icky kiddie before I drop her. Jog on top of me like that, like boot camp. Jump. Jump. Children are glowy like that. Take the philosopher with the honey thumb and a walk to the home by the side of the roadkill road. Take her and sponge her down of the sounds like one more minute up there. I said, it sounds like one more tourniquet. Barry?
What kind of questions is this, are these? Someone stole my notebook and wrote “Pooty West Virginia.” I didn’t write that. Though I can accept Pooty West Virginia as my own. Own thought. Own child. Is that normal? On Craigslist there’s an ad “looking for Normal Human to share house.” There’s always that ad. That’s the seek. The demand is never maxed for Normal Human. So, no. Because poetry is something pre-demand or supra-demand or exdemando- facto. Poet does not fulfill demand like order. The poet demands. The Maria Callas in every room.
Clarity is a distant cousin of mine. Call her Claire. When we were kids we used to braid each other, ride the moped, skid rocks, round the alley, back it up, trickle down the side like the yolk ogle down, the yolk ogle down, the yolk ogle down. We had a telephone on a string wrapped around a finger, a hot dog, a bun, some pudding, sister, something slidey shiny and beaten. The real question is: do you know from my cousin Connotation, let’s call her Connie?
What is the distance between cynical or sarcastic? Do I have to choose? Can’t I be both? At the same time? Can I be frank. Can I be listful. Do you mean wistful? I knew you were going to say that. Cynical is knowing you were going to say that. Sarcastic is saying Lonnie Donagan. Yeah. Long gone. Cynical is being prepared. Topic-less. Sarcastic is cynical caught by surprise. Retroactive cynical. What does this have to do with me? With the goat on the shelf? It’s just a question. There is no way to answer it without being cynical or sarcastic. Both are beautiful names for children. Twins. Bowling buddies. Let’s get out of here. So long. Kentucky.
I think I’ve never been to Madison. I’ve been to Madison but it wasn’t 71 degrees. It was the first inclination. I think I mean inkling. You have to buy beer in a Special Store in Madison. Are we talking about the same Madison? I think my handwriting looks like my mother’s: deformed. Had writing. Buy beer in the special store and take it to the jacuzzi. Take it in the jacuzzi. That was the first time I knew the problem. Girls Gone Gone at the bar behind me. That’s a problem. Behind me.
The lack of it has to do with everybody’s times and everybody’s lack of it. There is a space there for it. Sit down. Drink awhile. Feel better. Call me a cab. Some days the old folks had nothing more to say but abandon, abandon the old folks. The old folks are how we got here. This is the grocery store of my dreams. Mrs. Ennis?
Does work equal energy? Apart from physics. Work is demand. Energy is forgive. Energy is something you want and want to keep. Work is something you trade. Take my work, leave me my energy. College is made of people. People require energy which is work. You have to get rid of some things. Give up things. Spend your money. College gets a negative w-rap. Things that are similar are not things. Then: you could say stop asking me taking me. Now: you say, please ask me take me. Now you are lucky to get suck work. You are lucky to get work. You are lucky to give away your energy to people or things. You give it almost for free. Now. There is nothing similar. Not anymore. It’s a dirty word. Get burned. Stay bad.
Sandra Doller’s books are Oriflamme (Ahsahta, 2005), Chora (Ahsahta, 2010), and Man Years (Subito, 2011). Newer projects include a performance-prose thing called Leave Your Body Behind, a chapbook titled Memory of the Prose Machine (Cut Bank, 2013), and a translation of Eric Suchère’s Mystérieuse, selected by Christian Hawkey as winner of the 2012 Anomalous Press Translation prize. Founder & editrice of 1913 Press / 1913 a journal of forms, Doller lives in California, at the bottom, with man & dogs.