The following pages were made in preparation for readings given within the last 10 years, collected loosely into reverse chronology.
**
ANNIE GRIZZLE is a poet and shoemaker living in Milwaukee, WI. Her chapbook I Wake With Eyes The Sound of Nectarines was published by Ursus Americanus Press in 2023.
the prophet
after Alice Notley
someone told me people give too much away by telling someone else their dreams.
i didn’t ask whose choice it is what’s too much versus what’s enough.
what are you feeling while reading this?
only the prophet knows your answer.
on a spectrum from prophet to puppet
i am a dancer.
on a spectrum from dancer to sleeper
i am the understudy preparing for this role.
when at work people tend to talk in a voice that ticks upward, which often codes as fake.
but what is real about a workplace.
when one requires some semblance of the real
at work one must embark upon a visit to the toilet.
they can’t completely clear away the mask
and scrim of shit.
a person nearly always will select the stall right next to yours.
and this is solidarity.
how a friend is someone who texts five different options of the shoes they’d like to buy.
how a friend is someone who tells the friend
to buy the shoes if they can tell
the friend already has decided
they are going to buy the shoes.
how a shoe is someone who helps you get around
when you can’t do it on your own.
and sock is the roommate
who never does their dishes.
if you don’t talk unions while en route to getting very drunk
then what’s the point of parties?
when you walk out in the street and it’s warmer than expected
do you go back, change your coat,
or assume you will just get cold later?
i want something normal, i told the man, while gazing at a page of drinks.
the drinks were made up of ingredients most frequently found packed
among the grocery store’s fresh herbs.
at parties men will always tell you
how they’d like to circle back on that thought later.
but i always want to hear the thought right now.
after explaining about dream vocalizing as a means of self-paroxysm,
this same person said some things aloud
and promptly said he’d never told those things to any other person.
when people tell you this don’t trust them.
it’s worth trusting what they mean
but not the words they say in such an order.
lies are always giant truths. revealing, like a skintight turtleneck.
everyone’s said everything already anyways.
people often disregard both time and calendars.
i often forget time until my small watch presses up against my side
and makes a small robotic cheep.
like time is plastic.
work is mostly about being cold.
work is also about making cash.
if your workplace provides payment in a form you never see
they are aiming to stop you
from remembering your labor.
in a dream you can see a lover and a giant blow up gas station man
ballooned within the same frame.
in a dream you can become stranded on an island
on an airplane that’s a rollercoaster which turns out to be a ski lift.
when someone says something is a “low
lift” at work what they mean is nbd.
when someone says something is no big deal
what they mean is fuck you you fucking bitch.
cursing is almost always funny
except when the person doing it is a stranger
and you all are on the bus.
to be a voyeur on the bus is one of life’s great pleasures.
eating rice cakes is a good way to pass an afternoon.
like time is monday.
life fucks then you cry.
don’t tell people things about themselves they do not want to hear.
twenty-six is one of the most difficult ages for a man to be.
people like to know someone is talking about them but not precisely what they’re saying.
in my dream he was telling the truth
but while awake the sentiment seemed different.
let someone tell you their big secret before revealing which bad thing you previously let slip.
when cutting up the eggplant, be sure to rub the knife right through the purple squish of skin.
fingers are at risk of giving too much
selfhood to the countertop.
don’t text back a bad texter.
don’t fall in love with a bad texter.
don’t text in love.
don’t love and drive.
you can always fake an orgasm.
you can never fake a dream.
**
Countering Hate, Together
I look forward to moving forward together
continuously as we collectively together
move in a forward direction all together at once
I look together with you, all of us, now, now and
in the future, onwards, unhately together, rejecting
hate, hating rejection, I look forward to this future
this collective rejection of all of us and now and together
I look forward to hating work with you and you and you
and as we move in a witnessing and also interconnected
direction, as we all, as we continue, as we work, as we look
as we cultivate a task force, I look forward to thinking about
the day when we will put forth another announcement which
is to come with all of you and us and unhating and never stopping
remembering, never stopping forgetting, and it’s with you I look
I look with the wisdom of a team at my side, in my fingers, a team
writing this for me, and forward me, and taking force of me, I believe
in such times of pain and anger, in such times of forms of unhate, in
such times of touching with updates of being and building and bringing
and guiding and doing and advancing and aiding and finding and educating and
challenging and being in touch and creating and sharing and, and such timeliness of
supporting and integrating and planning, and I believe keeping it close in
mind will help us undertake everything we need to do in the coming
weeks and months and years and eons and millennia and forever and
forever and I look forward to this future, this end of the line
I look and I look and I look and it’s forward! And it’s you
and it’s you and it’s me and it’s me and it’s me and it’s
me and it’s together. And that is why I write today
to our shared community, with whom
I am unencountering hate, together.
Note: this poem draws from language in the former University of Pennsylvania President’s 11/1/23 email to all students/faculty/staff with the subject line “Countering Hate, Together,” re: “Penn’s Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism” and “related challenges of other forms of hate.” The email’s final line read “I look forward to continuing to work with all of you as we move forward together.” This poem is written from the perspective of Liz Magill, who stepped down from her role as UPenn President on 12/9/23 amidst backlash to statements made at a Congressional hearing on antisemitism in higher education.
**
JULIET GELFMAN-RANDAZZO is a recent graduate of the Rutgers University-Camden MFA program, where she wrote about deer, hand models, and trees. She is the author of the chapbook DUH (Bullshit Lit) and her work appears or is forthcoming in The Offing, the Cleveland Review of Books, Barrelhouse Magazine, Passages North, and Annulet: A Journal of Poetics, among others. Juliet lives in Philadelphia, where she runs the reading and open mic series Spit Poetry. She can be followed @tall.spy (Instagram) and @tall__spy (Twitter) but she can never be caught.
