Page 23

Ulrich Jesse K Baer

December 1, 2015December 4, 2025 tvverk

Face / Off

in a spell of letters
a pivot points blank
zone

as much as a calyx
as much as petals
meant to me
in my chicago unbecoming alone
hollowed to sound: patterns
as far as I am
as much as the meter
or music terms
I forget them in songs quicksand
eddies word leaves a bird
-quakes b/t
a film abt vincent price the lone
liest man in the galaxy: vampires
a truncated word
a seeled cosmos
an alveole method of eating
selfsame otherskies
I disgorge
as lodes up to earth
ores in the veins

mirror mirror divulges

my sunk weight
a nought angel
nulls central it
harp-strings
a locus in pause
I arrive after myself
body bandaged body
this turns out
skeletons inverse: gutted
horses were my parents
orphans cardinal
direction

& in compasses in

my vocal chords strayed
littoral partitions a cutout at sea
rain bow peg boards flat
redoubles grace
notes & pitchnow
hitch yr wagons
up to this: bis
dis arms world all
misblossom talk
talks to itself
same telluric :: earth
rock gnaws a way

II. in still strips

my face / off

Saggars Behind You

Sometimes it’s finished when you
Just crystallize me w out
Slip coating
Or burnishing blacken b/t
A porous world – ball
Clay, yr back:
Coils, earth wares

Under thermal shock, retracted
To the pt of hands
My middle, centering technics
You tonsil blurred under water
Slushverse & cirrus white slurs on
Slipinside a flux: yr murk shapes
& still bracketwater

Joints into clay, cracks re articulate
To Scatter brick teemed or
throes aside you
Oven mouth holes
vein-leaf-finger
To palm it figured us out
Side tempos, hollow where
Flames pulse so thrust you
Past over glazed, my sight
stakes out, wedge Anew
phantom earth saggars wherestone
torn out

They Live Too

repeat elysian in tones
blood-roped blood
lasso pulls thru
we wind down behind
sun sets lost strains
dust sifts bowl
basin grows out
big as outside: other
world underneath
kneels its cosmic
beatdown the land
all:

my mirror image likeness, unsky
my god space
expels or ejects – void untill
my aisles of body congeal
this is a tone
stutter it outre

you pass the haunted stars w yr
voice access voice
then pierce it blood
writhed into floors too
that laid the plains down
back on our knees, four
square then there cattle counterfeits
my blood buds :: uppercloud
it stamens – pierces me
shatter fare – this anneals
or tempers into a weather
machines
you ground out of : shimmer
like whittling into
wind b/t – slices of
airlost planes

a horse w o
color, you drive it in
countering: brooks still
idyll

ULRICH JESSE K BAER is an experimental poet conducting paranormal investigations into feelings across the globe. He was born in Georgia and grew up beneath Southern power plants, receiving his MFA from Brown University in 2017. He has been included in journals such as FENCE and Baest. He loves horses.

Carrie Lorig

November 24, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk2 Comments

The Book of Repulsive Women

Sonnet A

Compromised Paradise / Love scattered not concentrated Love talked about
The rhyme of the jewel / torn and sore / you pay attention to becomes
A thousand apples you might put in your theories / The Stingy Notions
Of the Bedded Heterosexual / But you are gone from the benefit of my

Love / Does the world belong in you? / No not countable the specificity
Of its love / In the blue descriptive city Stoned men think they are different
From Stoned women / the church is hot the church is hot &climbingoverit
IfellinlikeGreek&Latin / To die practically without mentioning / I can’t
Hear symphonies, can’t hear the popular Songs / the Coming Light / Why

Don’t you spend the hurricane with me / female of art / All the city’s a
Mass of slush and ices / My hand’s your hand in this rhyme of the jewel
You pay attention to / torn and sore / You look at me / This is all fucked up
Time rigorously going / from field to field / the student cereals Floating

Around in, of all Things, milk / A Sonnet is an offer of a previous peace /
She or he Who still tends to titles as if all of us Are reading a new book

Called THE NEW LIFE

Sonnet B

*********

*****

*******

All reading is blood

So long as the sky, /

a long leafless flower / stalking,

is recognized as a citation

All reading is blood All employment / seems impossible /

a form with consequences / based on the description /

wrk

pain

wrk

pain

This braid is existence / That’s what my sonnet sings / The only words I’ve said today¹ /
A compromised paradise / wrk / pain

*********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

¹ “Mortal joy is that way” –Bill Callahan

/ I’ve been writing somehow / A Blackbury A female of art / wrk / pain / the peripheral
sonnet I can’t write

a form with consequences

/ the church is hot the church is hot / or if I can I have to /
I must be seriously things /

I must drag it around

/ the Coming Light Why don’t you call it The Prophet the Coming Light
Against all agony / A shard wrecks in peace /

A / A screen A fog All of us********************************************
**********************************************************************************
know other / How can we / How can********************************************
**********************************************************************************
the line know other / body All of us********************************************
**********************************************************************************
failure inside / my own name********************************************
**********************************************************************************
A sonnet An ode / wicked / of ********************************************
**********************************************************************************
stealing back A word’s standing ********************************************
**********************************************************************************
perversity contains / A sentence A dead*******************************************
**********************************************************************************
A richness I / then room / I am not********************************************
**********************************************************************************
/ containing I can write a sonnet********************************************
**********************************************************************************
now / This is my only strength ********************************************

/*********************************************
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//*********************************************
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/*********************************************
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/*********************************************
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//*********************************************
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/*********************************************
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//*********************************************
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/*********************************************
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/*********************************************

Yr lot/ my type

“That is less common,
and more rare, than one might think—to die.”

– Mary Ruefle

The overgrown tremble or the overgrown rattle or the outside pocket / of frogs
burning along the Florida highway / was unexpected / and at first, assumed to be a
problem with the speakers but was actually a scream / an orbit / a floating / with a hole
punch in them. Before we left for the airport / down the Florida highway, my fingertips
became a rash and they were bright and peeling and bright and peeling and traveling,
briefly, to my legs where a small flare erupted / was unexpected and at first, assumed to
be a problem with the speakers but was actually a scream / an orbit / a floating / with a
hole punch in them.

“The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over
their entire bodies from their fingers.” -Akiko Takakura

To go on tour.
To go on.
To go on tour.
To go on.
To go on tour.
To go on.
To go on tour.

To go on tour is to be cursed with the book.

As soon as there is motion / a poem / As soon as there is art, the pretentious
scrap / the pretentious corpse / the female occupant / the repulsive jewel you pay
attention to torn and sore / She has no choice / She has no choice when she reads.

All reading is blood.

“Fuck you, I’m real.” – Emily Brontë

“You’ll use what I taught you to manipulate others.” – Emily Kendal Frey

“Saretta Morgan is black and alive and she thinks you should be, too.” –Saretta Morgan

/ Just prior to the motion
/ just prior to the motion of buses
/ just prior to the motion of sitting with A in New York and Pittsburgh and DC
/ just prior to the motion of reading
/ just prior to the motion of building a second performance from / the debris of reading
/ from the motion of the debris of reading / of hearing you say
/ YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT ME
/ AFTER I READ
/ I HAVE TO PERFORM MY PAIN THE PAIN THAT IS JUST PRIOR TO /
THE MOTION OF VIOLETS / YR VIOLENCE
/ CAN’T WORRY ABOUT ME WHEN I’M ALIVE DESPITE
/ WHEN I’M FUCKING BURNING BUT STILL REFUSING INTO OBLIVION
/ THIS IS WHAT IT IS / TO BE LUMINOUS / SAYS A SCREAM / AN ORBIT /
/ A FLOATING / WITH A HOLE PUNCH IN THEM / the motion
/ of being bound towards / a different city every night
/ just prior to the motion of binding me Stoned men think they are different from
Stoned women
/ They think they shorten war / A and I
/ We r alive, talking / Our time on the water is right here
/ We r alive, talking We die talking We experience the obliterations all at once
/ just prior to the motion of dried papaya /
the motion of the rock I bit down on in the lentil salad /
the motion of the blueberries in LeBron James’ hands in Ohio
/ just prior to the lawyers
/ just prior to the crystals held up with floss
the motion of the rats / the angels on dope slipping / under
the motion of slipping under / a fence with a bruised tooth
a repulsive jewel you pay attention to torn and sore
in their mouths like in my mouth
/ just prior to the motion of sitting with M in the enormous surface /
the motion of sleeping in the same bed with M in Indiana
as animal sounds who care for each other /
the motion of sleeping in the same bed with M in Indiana
to the shock of the Stoned men /
the motion of a body never needs a cunt to be a Stoned women /
the motion of a man can be a body a body / never needs power to meet me
/
as animal sounds who care for each other
/ just prior to the motion of We get out there together /
Singing in the pines / We get out there singing together / I thought mostly
/ of discomfort /

I thought mostly of discomfort as I stood by the window / where N writes
/ just prior to the motion of my own / leaving / I thought mostly of discomfort
/ incarnate + sacred /

It’s here, / the bold darkness, / I thought / as I thought to describe / a chronic loop /
As I thought how to describe / as I thought how to create / a connection for N or you
/ a connection to the sensation of /

a chronic loop / rather than to simply have N or you make contact with / my chronic
loop / of thinking / that is illness and also feeling / To describe that I perform with but
can’t see my body

Just prior to the motion of my own / leaving / I thought mostly of discomfort /
incarnate + tracking / I stood by the window where N writes / and tried to describe
my life / diseased + tracking

-5 yoga classes / week + some running on top of it
-0 days off from wrk / pain / 0 BEERS just prior to the motion of my own / leaving
-my tour / just prior to having to face / the body / that I perform with but can’t see
-I just feel shock / or disgust / Witnessing Instagram
-I’m worse than a corpse / I’m alive,
-I think trying to understand how I, the Blood Barn,
-even appear / a terrible exposure of flesh,
-the initiating / implicating mark
-of an uncontrollable narrative

Mary Ruefle is wrong / I think / or I thought / riding on the bus / eating peppery nuts in
a verdant state / because I am yr verdant bb / / reading Mary Ruefle /
and thinking of

what it means to claim that / to die / dynamically or vividly / to be alive and also a
corpse / and also something else / the language of resilience / is LESS common / and
MORE rare than one might / think

“You will remember / but I will die.” –“Planets of the Universe,” Fleetwood Mac

“I said, biochemically I am more alive than you. / This is not a lie for the sake of
the line.” –Kelin Loe

I know Ruefle means for her statement to be a call to arms / YOU MUST DIE / YOU
MUST ALLOW YOURSELF TO DIE / but I knew how to die before I knew how to live
/ I once practiced /

how to kill myself via refusal / via repeating over and over that I couldn’t / need food /
I was the sea / an impossible charge in the depth / I was the sea / Just a sound / an
unedited version extending /

extending her stay / in the world / I was the sea / the most extreme form of self-hatred
that says, / Don’t hate yourself anymore/ As soon as there is motion / a poem / illness
that is also feeling / As soon as

there is art / As soon as there is a dead body in the cell / a chronic loop / As soon as
there is a dead body in the street / No not countable the specificity Of its love / In the
blue descriptive city

the pretentious scrap / the pretentious corpse / the female occupant / the repulsive
jewel you pay attention to torn and sore / She has no choice / She has no choice when
she reads / She has no choice but To die

without practically mentioning / She has no choice but To remember all at once and To
not be able to include it all She can’t be straight She falls in love with bodies She can
perform with her body

/ She can feel the organs around her neck She doesn’t need a cunt to be here just
a wound / just a different word for overlapping roughly / for the brutal practice of
overlapping roughly For how we practice

towards each other / overlapping roughly She can’t be straight / Feminism can’t be the
only word for regarding how she dies / for regarding how she lives / for what can’t be
rare We need the motion of our bodies /

We need more/ a cry / for this moment a chronic loop / just prior to the motion of our
bodies just prior to the motion of living / dying She can perform with her body but she
can’t see it She has no choice but To include it all anyway

“I am now an exhibit and not a worker.” – Alice Notley

I thought about this phrase while I was on tour / When I had not yet read it /
When I had only yet / lived it.

If the witch eats the president of The Poetry Foundation / If the witch eats the
president of Facebook / If the witch eats the president of every university / If the witch
eats the president of violence / If the witch eats / ?? / what should happen to her / ?? /
the Sphinx of Literature.

“Help me, the rapist said, I’m being hoisted up.” –Feng Sun Chen

Album art / The Kossoy Sisters Bowling Green

“It’s hard being a little girl because you have to be bad a lot,” says Alice Notley to
Bernadette Mayer’s daughter, Marie. N printed off a long poem of hers for my birthday /
which is the same day as Emily Brontë’s and just prior to The Blue Moon / Sappho’s
boat in a burst /

I read that it’s also just prior to the 50th anniversary of T.S. Eliot’s death

I wonder how many times someone has posted on his grave and told him

he’s still / the best one / at Bread Loaf / We have to find a way to teach

without stealing $$ from students / I sat with S in the kitchen this morning

and there was so much wrk / pain wrk / pain / between us The only words

I’ve said today / Mortal joy is that way I live with these flowers I barely know

/ in Atlanta, GA Mortal joy is that way I call the house The Blue Moon I’m 29

and booked I’m 29 and exaggerating I’m 29 and too personal I’m 29 and

I regard atrocity / Resistance is suffering, I hear the yoga teacher say /

No, I said to S in the car, Resistance is technology / Resistance is an

acknowledgment of suffering, / of the possibility that its lastingness / might be

be unfathomable / A house on the edge of fields / Resistance is a book that can be

illiterate and remembered / as a clump / as a cup / S and I talk about how a

rareness / a book might fall out of the archive / and be lost or be placed

in an airplane hangar in Florida / A house on the edge of fields / and then

brought back to the library / because U made a call and said, I have found this

body / because this is what moves poetry / If that’s not the trace of your

experience / the lost and found body / the illiterate and remembered body /

the clump / the cup / the impossible movement between regarding atrocity

and mortal joy, / then I don’t fucking know why you are lecturing me about

how much I need to behave when I read / Reading ends in a cry / it ends in a call

that says, I have found this body / because that is what moves poetry I will put

ruins in your life / your cute life N says I am getting more unforgiving / N is

reading what I’ve written so far and helping me / he is helping me acknowledge

that I’ve become more unforgiving because he loves me because/ A body doesn’t

need power 2 meet me / in the sound / in the listen / We need 2 meet / 2 meet

in the sound / in the listen / around and beyond Feminism if we’re going to

acknowledge how much a person can love / thought they should be loved /

by another person / if I’m going to acknowledge how much I love this person

who let me stand by the window where he writes and describe what it felt like to

practice killing myself via repeating over and over that I couldn’t / need food /

that food was for / men who had been born / N is helping me become more

unforgiving because forgiveness doesn’t mean you’ll ever see your violence /

because forgiveness doesn’t mean you’ll stop telling me you want poetry to be fun

/ because forgiveness is following the law / because forgiveness is ‘playing the

game’/ the creation and maintenance of a world where I’m buying your stupid

shit on Sky Maul forever / No, you won’t save anyone / Forgiveness means

writing / will try to heal me / because writing means I’ll include it all and

never be able to include it all / help me include it all / help me not include it all

/ You look at me You won’t save me / H gets us a table for 2 and we drink a

champagne with flowers and a cold metal / straw she tells me she can see

narrative in me / but I’m afraid it is too much that already / or narrative is

forgiveness for men who have been born / or I’m a repulsive woman or

I believed that / until I went on tour / until I was cursed with the book and

realized I’m a repulsive woman I’m something worse / than a corpse I’m alive

I’m something worse / than a corpse I’m dead I’m a corpse and I read like

“A growing, laughing, living body” / When you save a life / I will write a hilarious

poem about a dog in a croissant-shaped hat and it won’t be more than 30 lines

so you can stop banning me from bringing my wrk / to class When you save a life

/ I will write a sonnet

a sonnet ///
a sonnet /////
a sonnet ///
a sonnet
a sonnet / //// ///////
a sonnet/ /

I don’t know how to write a sonnet. I went to bed last night at nine thirty a little
bit drunk / a little sic cunt swollen from crying / from the wrk / pain of my love / from
the wrk / pain of FaceTiming with my love / from the wrk / pain of having moved to
Atlanta, GA without my cat and my love / for a little while. I don’t know how to write a
sonnet / derived / I don’t know where the sonnet comes from. This morning I rode my
bike to my job and listened to people talk about color / If no one tells you the sky is blue,
you might call it white /

If no one tells you how real trauma / terror is for repulsive bodies, you might call
it invisible.

All reading is blood
So long as the sky, /
a long leafless flower / stalking,

is recognized as a citation

“I remember red, black and brown, but nothing else.” –Akiko Takakura
[describing the sky / August 6, 1945 / Hiroshima, Japan]

A sonnet I wrote after B wrote me / a letter asking me if I had any poems with the
word corpse in Them / A sonnet I wrote after (Djuna Barnes’) The Book of Repulsive
Women chose me / I didn’t believe in rare books / but the deaths flare up They erupt /
We are wired to look away / to describe this sonnet or the book as being so oddly built
up by other writers / by reading / by corpses / by what each writer means / and that is
wrong I think it is wrong to call it / oddly built / or to emphasize How Much it considers
writing / when writing must consider the holy, tyrannical air / each writer means

I think we know to die / In my MFA did I learn how To ask how many sonnets
will be in the Best New Poets this year or did I learn To die / I ask why / I think we know
to be dismembered I think we know to carry ashes in our arms Flowers, champagne, and
cold metal have / always lived in this space On the phone I smoke one of J’s cigarettes in
Chicago instead of taking the water A offers because my hands are shaking so hard My
hands are shaking so hard when F tells me who I’m working for / A sonnet / I wrote
about how dreaming is hard /

You realize you’ve been dreaming /

You’ve been dreaming / thinking you’ll feel safe / thinking space we live in space
we write / is safe for anyone / to study to admire Only awe, / which is a force / a force
that is illness and also feeling / a force that comes from between what’s terror and
what’s real and what’s glistening / a ribbon / a stream / in my imagination, / keeps my
heart a red belly a mud / “Always, this nowhere to go,” / says Jackie Wang in “THE
FUTURE IS BETWEEN US”/ “I don’t think about where I will go next,” says Jackie
Wang in “THE FUTURE IS BETWEEN US” / I don’t think about where I will go next /
on the bus with A / I shed on my hands thinking going on tour / thinking writing will
only reveal love to me / A sonnet /

A sonnet / A lemon pistachio donut

A sonnet / I can write / A sonnet / I can’t write / I wrote I write / A sonnet / A
love / wrk / pain A repudiation of everything / wrk / pain The only words I’ve said today
A sonnet / A feral top knot / An indescribable composure She or he Who still tends to
titles / An indescribable composure as if all of us Are reading / a new book Called THE
NEW LIFE.

Notes for the Poem / What Spilled / In the Velvet Jungle / From Where:

-Sonnet A is comprised of lines from throughout Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets (Tender
Buttons Press).

-Sonnet B is mostly constructed out of events / places / feelings that took place on over
the course of a book tour I went on with Alexis Pope (+ Mike Krutel when Alexis had to
leave for a short time) from approx. July 7th, 2015 – July 20th, 2015.

-Horoscope #1 comes from the July 2015 horoscopes posted on galacticrabbit.com and
Horoscope #2 comes from the horoscopes posted on chaninicholas.com for the week of
July 2oth, 2015.

-The photo depicting a material version of “Fuck you, I’m real.” – Emily Brontë was
constructed by Nick Sturm as part of a chapbook he made for my 29th Birthday called
ANCIENT LEO.

-When the cover The Kossoy Sisters’ album appears, you might want to listen to “Single
Girl” by The Kossoy Sisters w/ Erik Darling.

-“A growing, laughing, living body,” / is a line I can’t stop thinking about / considering
from Hiromi Ito’s Wildgrass on the Riverbank (Action Books).

-The quotes from Akiko Takakura, a survivor of the Hiroshima atrocity, were taken from
an article the poet Brandon Shimoda shared on his twitter. The Washington Post
published this article, written by Ishaan Tharoor, on August 6th, 2015, the 75th
anniversary of the bombings.

**

CARRIE LORIG is the author of The Pulp vs. The Throne (Artifice Books), which is her first full-length work. Her chapbooks include nods. (Magic Helicopter), Reading as a Wildflower Activist (H_NGM_N), stonepoems (with Sara June Woods, Solar Luxuriance), and Labor Day (with Nick Sturm, Forklift Ohio).

Meagen Crawford

November 16, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

from FLAT

| ON a notional setting furnished by each pleasant fixture of a

concrete extracted | an attempt to make what can and can not tear a home

and a hand of all which is incalculable animating upon another new stretch |

wild pauses and an answer a universally recognized gesture moving within

a symbol | our comfort address on the wilted hour | exactly how one relates to

the daylessness we all have ticket to that

| ON a thickness of compilations to be alert and warping murky and again

pale a kind of necessary as self documentation is hopping in retrospect an arc in

bloom cycles of blank formations unsituated states of at the screen together |

all is made apparent to be involved with everyones |

an outlet is a vacuous necessity it demands an isolation be absolved into a

suspension | each volume no enclosure no simple barrier appearing gone old

comment

| ON a press and the lost is composed of temporal and significant stock

compacted and starchy attempting to reconcile | a press and my armies come in from

the wet grasses of touch wars | I have difficulty participating with concrete clears that

accumulate and spell out a vision of an unknown and fellow citizen | of knocking on an

entry with alarming give candle lighting me against the whole wall of lights

| OFF | I cant keep picking up my distraction | I dismantle the design the feel

melts I slap upon the pool of it | I cant keep picking up my distraction it enters with

presence as if the center of a private memory fenced in | all of the fences refresh around it

a sentient haze of what composes alerts I will assert myself in the linings of |

I cant keep picking up my distraction | it slips every time into an in hand collective

posturing an anxiety about the omitted |

I cant keep picking up my distraction it is half broken | it crossed over itself too many

times trying to bring me to myself | it is pooled up with iridescent and flimsy qualities

| ON the dismantled is feeding neglected area as a logged

citizenship bring flagging statements | turn a flock on the lawn that never dies |

forms hoot and gather slapping hands and take all of the room | allow their shapes to

be stated expanses lawns that never die | the atmosphere up for grabs

pulling together like a suspension bridge | all countless coverings continue to exist

among the uneven spaces | all this glossy | I ask you questions throughout the day

and I make statements that in good trust you respond to

| To lose the possibility of recognizing 2 similar objects, 2 colors, 2 laces, 2 hats 2 forms
whatsoever. To reach the impossibility of sufficient visual memory, to transfer from
one like object to another the memory imprint. | Marcel Duchamp

| OFF |

which sways outwardly in frantic participants in the quickening

exactitude of transplanted light the ownership of being noticed | settling it sounds like a

pebble thrown at the window as a calling after |

the colors always staying the same the material is foreign | persons with their laps as

still as an artifact of wind on green manipulate the whole directional system of areas a

whole setting | if you appear and if you notice

**

MEAGEN CRAWFORD lives in Nashville where she co-edits ‘Pider and paints interpretations of her feelings.

manuel arturo abreu

November 9, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

THE LOAM

The font of winter
of exhausted hours
small breaths expelled like voodoo
the fountain of doves

The Spring canvas
blank and sprinkling

in the blinking dusky windowpane
remembering the densest emptiness
in a foggy cup

I want one specific memory of you
to be the only one left

A specific owner:
the jealous swan
that opens to the stony eyelash

Now winter is a Bone
not everything Is an image

these hungry serifs of wind
Things decay into the empirical
I’m standing in the street again

ARGUMENT STRUCTURE

dropcrotch sunset
pillory clinton
logophoricity
the unreal has been colonized
nostalgia is violence
tin foil sock
literal frenemy
freon vibes
wake up sheeople
don’t let forget
friends don’t let friends
no nothing
pink discussion
digital vellum
creon
anacaona

RACE IS THE MONEY OF THE REAL

‘ayy lmao’ like a coo in the distance
impending panic attack from a govt form’s length
the idea of being a citizen is depressing
the humor of kafka (or anything)
is the horror of it being funny
my stomach turns on a dime
i puke out dead wings and bile
real artists have hunger breath *exhales*
it’s been a slow give black ppl money month
check out this inconceivable indigeneity
need to buy a replacement circular fluorescent light
look at the gloating spiderwebs on the bong!
my paypal is garageresidency at gmail dot com
trying to find out whether i dated a literal nazi
also one of those mail-order dna tests sounds fun
let me google that for u (“tragic mulatto”)
i’m starting a new blog it’s about wittgenstein’s dick
i would kill myself but like i’m too cool also too lazy
i can see ur body tighten like a noose around dark skin
you ask me to stretch you out but
suicide is expensive, gender is expensive
race is the money of the real
when the loud runs out i feel death’s chill

**

MANUEL ARTURO ABREU (b. 1991, Santo Domingo) is a poet and artist from the Bronx. Their work is about precarity, magical thinking, and the likelihood of surviving. Their first book List of Consonants is available from Bottlecap Press. See more at twigtech.tumblr.com and @Deezius.

Kevin Killian

November 2, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

Revival of 3-D

Revival of 3-D came and I
went with this guy

How the audience loved the live
bodies making love in our laps!

Felt like a flit of bug
spray up my legs,

Felt like an erection over here how
about you over there

The glasses weren’t made of glass
that was part of it

Felt like America had been held hostage just like an
Anderson Cooper vision of night life for lo! all these years

then only now set free & this guy—I mean I’m there with Robin
Thomas who should be up on the screen not holding my
arm—this guy Robin Thomas yelps

and why? Rita Hayworth throws a
glove in my face and whispers, “Count the
red hairs in my teeth, they’re for you, they’re for real.”

Afterwards that—I took off my “glasses” and looked
with my real eyes at this guy, Robin Thomas

Half of him was red and half green,
Half of him was no and half yes.

I thought—American life has always
churned out this way—

I thought—California has 4 dimensional
lives to live with colored glasses to look at—
to dial them down to 3-D

Half of him was day and half night—
half of him was me and half you.

Everyone’s either wearing the glasses or has them pushed up-
side their heads to hold their
Hair back

and why not?

**

Tottering Bridge, Exploding Bomb

Tottering bridge, a bomb burst
under you and seized your supports,
reducing you to splinters. Once
you’d carried kings to queens,
costers to market—now you’re a
heap of toothpicks. Still your
presence is felt: each time we
call each other up & make dates
to meet, we’re replicating the
functions you used to perform.

Exploding bomb, once you’d gone off
& destroyed tottering bridge I
began to pity you. Who
can imagine your bland beginnings
in an alley workshop, three parts
metal, one part fizz, without
regretting you’re now all ash?
I never did like that old wood bridge—
he was so phallic, so imperious.
You and he now share a common state
of fulsome, bygone pastness. In a
few years I’ll join you both.

**

High Voice

I have a high voice maybe there’s something wrong with my balls and
maybe that’s why I’m so shallow

On the other hand I always figured it had something to do with this bump on
the back of my head—sometimes I think my head is this big because it’s so
stuffed with the doings of the stars

Or maybe because of Irish tenor blood soaking in my veins

When children poke at me pull on their mother’s arm say “Mommy,
Mommy, I’m frightened: that man looks like a pig and talks like a girl,”
I often say,

“Child you sound more like me than I sound like a girl—and ditto for your
mother. And what pig?”

Ever hear yourself on a tape played back? Well, when this happens to me
I hear a chorus of crickets singing

“Take back your mink, take back your pearls”

crickets cacophonous

crickets, false with unbearable affectation,

crisp, arch, keen, clipped halfway between the earth and sky

I hear helium drunk crickets—insects with rubbing wings running on that
endless Mobius ribbon of time—

I have a voice high in the clouds and a nature low, low, lower than the slimy
trail of the snail

yet that’s all I have
to undo the origami—thank you,

You can imagine how this makes me feel.

I can imagine how it makes you feel.

**

The Letter “K”

When they first thought
of beginning a person’s name
in upper case what, what
were they thinking of?

Why does the letter “K”
in “Kevin” get what amounts
to visual sovereignty
over four other letters?

I think of this now when
I consider the way left
seems to come before right.
It also seems that we

age then we die, who
thought of these things, why
is our experience so
uniform? The “K” is a kindly

king beloved by all like
Princess Diana Spencer and
loves to shop. The other
letters try to look up

his robes, they’re low and reach
only the satisfactions of
the louche and set free:
under the Magna Carta a

capital letter signed all
the rest of them free with
his initial, some ancestor
of “K” only less Kafkaesque

where it really counted, who
carried it on the point of a
spear sharpened on the
bare branch of a tree.

Evidently we’re supposed to
carve our initials in a heart
on that bare tree now that
we love each other. What

are we thinking of? It’s
all royalist humbug is what
it is.

**

Broke Down Palace

55 lines without a letter “h” in honor of bp nichol

Margaret wake up, Maggie, turn on
as if I were an item in QVC catalogue
or a slice of crisping toast on an open griddle
Time for injection, okay, but . . .
tell me my family and my country
ou est les petites princes of Diana, ou but back to UK
meantime you are surveying so closely I
can smell your glance of suspicion
like old pine cone of Fraser Valley
and I am sitting on veranda, cream on
rings in my knuckles vivid rings of a great Olsonian pine tree in
loss land

People of two countries squawking
to and fro, mockingbirds above lamb trails
appellation zero birds of a
Fever

Listen up, you were only bleeding
onto prednisone smears on oily blanket
in dark trunk of 50s automobile
speedy as calliope

no, gazelle

Animals in Toronto Zoo under police protection
but suffering, deracinated from soil and dark
I don’t give a damn about
bad analogues, only our big condition
non-living, non-working, non-Jackson Pollock

Toronto clubland, klieg rays burning yon darkened sky
look up above Pitti Palace of Brian Mulroney
saying in two voices

we will be flattered
nous avons flatterones

Did you get all flustered at your debut
of course and after my two little princes went back
to faraway UK not even stopping by to eat
my violet crumble I just broke down

in a fit of blue blotter acid, broken memories
of a lakeside trailer, just me, just two boys
and me

Before TV cameras I played my part
valiant, face clear and strong
backstage, different story
tears filling my flask of mitten

Never meant to get so
. . . Wienersian about my problem, but was
poetry always meant to be about a life,
or was it once a performative gesture towards
break down
A gender unknown, a word
under tip of my tongue?
Were I a praying sort I’d be on my knees to
St. Ress and St. Rategy, begging and screaming
for realignment, I’m a set of old brakes
on a muddy transcontinental trek to
loss land . . .

500 KM to

loss land . . .

**

KEVIN KILLIAN has written 20 books, most recently PINK NARCISSUS POEMS (The Song Cave) and EYEWITNESS (Franary Books). Coming up: WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR?, a new book of stories from Semiotext(e), and TAGGED 2, a sequel to Killian‘s earlier collection of color photos of nude poets, artists, musicians, filmmakers, etc.

Shy Watson

October 26, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

spank me sideways

i lack interest in being appropriate
9 out of 10 wouldn’t screw
stuff
me in a corner where i like it
adorn me with a party hat
adorn me with a party whistle while i whisper to the man beside me “i want water.”
this isn’t my first nor my last so why should it matter where i stuff my coat or wipe myself
this.
moment before saying anything this
moment where our eyes catch up on new data
the smell when you hug of new conditioner
she used to use garnier fructis but now it’s dove
punch
in the bowl i wouldn’t touch it
i see the girl lying on the couch with the cup in her hand
how you always dream of houses, exhaustively
how i always dream of everything and wake up bored
in my room alone
under a mobile of origami crickets that my friend made
the first breath how it burns
the last tug how it repeats itself over and over
a VHS on loop “i want to be dismembered,”
she said, “i want each part of me in a different state.”
because how else can we exist everywhere at once?”
i want to be the air against your face when you’re near the ocean
i want to be the faint taste of sand the morning after
the pastel stucco with the palm tree shadow
you stop and take time to photograph

well, we’ll be here
wishing you well
and warning you where not to go at night

**

SHY WATSON is a 22 y/o woman currently studying at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She was raised in rural Missouri and has since lived in several U.S. cities. She interns for fields magazine, waitresses at a sports bar, and is addicted to Manic Panic hair dyes. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Nick Sturm

September 23, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

LANGUAGE WITH BOAT

“Now then, Pooh,” said Christopher Robin, “where’s your boat?”

“I ought to say,” explained Pooh as they walked down to the shore of the island, “that it isn’t just an ordinary sort of boat. Sometimes it’s a Boat, and sometimes it’s more of an Accident. It all depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On whether I’m on the top of it or underneath it.”

You should read Harmonium no
let me change your mind I say to the male
wall in the bar Florida body I’ve got
a shrine to crush
library injury I’m not that glowing capable
student with strong words at ends of lines
I’m not
Then who are you? I’m a goth beach ball I’m
nervous prominence red
haired so critical & underneath it I’m
broke you stupid motherfucker it’s spring
in this book

***

You should read Harmonium no
the states won’t allow it Oh but you should
who is saying
I should? it’s the administration
behind the bougainvilleas that sounds a
blue velvety smear too many colors syllables
to refuse to be beautiful do I refuse that
yeah with a dolphin in my woods
What are you
under? I’m under the states in Florida
with a dolphin in my woods
not reading
studying
with some umber mothish hate
how to begin not to die
under the administration no
let me change your mind

***

You should read Harmonium no
I dream of homelessness blood closed-
captioning friends I forget
my shoes & walk in a parking lot I’m
dead
Does every line end with a strong word?
No What do you mean, no? I mean
they’re all strong words
sunshine champagne theory
fucking what I don’t know to love
in the dream I put all this in my book
I mean
beautiful is veracious
not conscious written choices but
belligerent confetti to describe debt
I’m in the real parking lot I buy a swiffer duster
a papaya a growling black amulet is my debt
to you my love is
doomed page on page
an unfinished verdant phrase

***

You should read Harmonium no
I will not rely only on the words but faithful
I will rely on you flawed on the lawn those
words
little lime tree weather
we love repulsive lyric aberrations
our love in abnormal ranges
I am not capable student necessary angel
Gorgeous Queen Marmot what am I saying
I’m saying I’m
studying you
pain its evocation not ours but sounds true
at the nape of the neck mortal personal
with hair pulled back
that’s the pain
under it being wear cleaving negative rainbows
irreducible shine honey baby need another
cup of coffee
& radiant not brilliant we ride
our sound going on
for thousands of pages
that was an example
of imagination

***

You should read Harmonium no
I’m listening to Cat Stevens not Wallace I think
I see the light coming through me too
shackled to see those are from different songs
but I heard them together

***

You read Harmonium no
I’m dead not in harmony with men
unambiguously
which is what they sing to me
only seeming to grieve when they lose everything
when is that
I’m being followed by a moon shadow no
it’s time to be relentless under it near
& against
a mammal comma
in unstated pleasure What are you under?
I’m underneath skinning
his opulent rooms for music
to betray big words clever
noises not reading
studying
against an anecdote of men by the thousand
O, Florida under the states no genius underneath
violent boat violet shade did you hear
about the poetry salary cap increase? yeah
I’m dead Can you explain that?
no
I live it clearly
as you do inlaid in the book
not me inverted
foaming roses

***

You should read Harmonium no
my disillusionment comes in broad daylight
dear Wallace dear fuckface
I don’t just want to live & I don’t care
if that sounds ignoble

***

You should read Harmonium no
“Too many crazy white people nowadays”
Steven says “don’t want to be a part of that”
but “people need people” says a book I rip
apart Who are
people?
the ones under the states the ones
petal pissing gut levels in hard light
ones who bends
my ritual edges who awkward
grace thickens
sound by sound I’m saying
life is the administration’s grave are we
people You’re not people yes we are dolphins
in woods the people of the sexy window night
but who wants to be rightly
not in an old chaos
of the sun no one unless you’re a moaning prickish
piece of life insurance now I’m being bitchy
so let me be a little more
extravagantly uneasy
I’m a mystical whoring fleeting body
up in the air
against all people

***

You should read Harmonium no
I can’t tell stories I am
identified against a soft blue background
crispy Costco prawns impersonality all those shitty
Mel Gibson movies it’s nice to make a little noise
to spite a few things
so why do I cry watching Braveheart
& do you remember that movie Forever Young
where Mel Gibson is cryogenically frozen like
Walt Whitman Disney who knows the difference
I’m a star member no mere star & buy all the fruit
I bodily can but anyway I cry
watching Braveheart
all the holy tyrannical air pressed in one man’s hair
they paint themselves blue banshees
& show their dicks to kings so I cry
overmatched & betrayed
in the wicked gutted dawn public unmarvelous
with a papaya that’s not freedom
not an accident I’m underneath
ideas feeling it

***

You should read Harmonium no
my malice speaks in amulets jade mostly
static under the states at the bar Florida body
kings tell me what to read or mostly fuck off
in breezy khakis
I’m under that
the source of gentleness & cruelty & work
rip not rid the town of evil no I think that’s right
I’m dead
in the living boat with a hectic vocabulary
umber mothish hate
symptoms in condos breezy dudes
the allergic buzz of being administered
What are you under?
I’m under the states under
toppled stateless breach I kiss
songs under
you’re still young that’s your fault no
this isn’t a Cat Stevens song it’s three nights work
dreaming of the book
voices cords a grace stretched greenly feeling
Whose voice? You don’t get voice These voices isn’t voice
it’s life erring an accident in a nice hopefully flower
a love or stain reeling
writing where I have read no
let me change your mind

***

You should read Harmonium no
I trace the music that’s how I live it’s not popular
but is under the states to steal
rosemary from the park lines
from the books composed to be
no strong words at all
profaning the men no
where to live except to be hateful
perverse indignant wicked & because of it
to be actually a harmony
in praise of unremorseful
healers the dead not him the male
wall in the bar Florida body
should I let up should I let up
on Stevens Walt Whitman Disney should I let up
on myself who knows the difference no I should
pay the rent
& get broke fall out
in the worded air
I open the book randomly to the page after page
after Alice & unfix my hair alimentary canal alimony
aliped aliphatic Alison alive alkaline all
choral grit I’m dead
moving care simple can be read
that’s my dream
a secret of red books not secretive but bound
sour fevered clouds
in bar Florida body
the design of this ship
is no distinctions I insist

***

You should read Harmonium no
I’m desolate & making guacamole
with you under
a black amulet violent boat violet shade
the states the pain of people imagining
what else imagination looks like
out from under
in a dream not reading
studying
an intricate ship
so undisciplined
that we live

**

NICK STURM is the author of Labor Day with Carrie Lorig and I Was Not Even Born with Wendy Xu. His work has appeared in Black Warrior, Typo, jubilat, PEN, and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014. A book, How We Light, was published by H_NGM_N in 2013. He is currently a PhD candidate at Florida State University and is working on an extended critical project on the poetry of Ted Berrigan.

Katy Cousino

September 17, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

Q: Is GIRDLEBABY a girl?
A: GIRDLEBABY leaks monstrous menses
from time 2 time– time after time.
She cries to Cyndi Lauper but main-
tains Kid Rock testicles. U tell me.

Q: Does GIRDLEBABY poop?
A: GIRDLEBABY is both figural
Feces & consumption
of fecal figure. Next question.

Q: Is GIRDLEBABY human?
A: Even humans are inhuman.

GIRDLEMOMMA is prepared for the initial womb-shed;
she commissioned a gold-plated girdle from the local
Girdlesmith shop long ago, where her womb was first implanted.
She paid in winks & booty pops, when currency wasn’t all blowjob.

GIRDLEMOMMA: My sweet monster, today you are girl.
GIRDLEBABY: I don’t want to read Jane Eyre.
GIRDLEMOMMA: Gold & blood rly become you.

There is a knock on the door. In the kitchen GIRDLEBABY stands nude;
clumps of yellow blood leave her. The fridge door is open
& so is the golden girdle; w/o grease GIRDLEBABY will not fit.
The Humanoids barge in.

Humanoid #1: congratz on yr girlhood, pork beast
Humanoid #2: some overw8 bodies never bleed
Humanoid #1: we brought a vat of butter for you to slide thru, yw

GIRDLEBABY thighyams vibrate, begin to discolor;
they are mustard w/the everfloe of lard.

GIRDLEBABY: I will deplete if this keeps up.

GIRDLEMOMMA enters the kitchen, appalled
by the Humanoid faces. She kicks them out,
keeping the Cuntry Cock butter. Her baby-girdle
is up to cankles in organ-ooze.

GIRDLEMOMMA: I will now lather you.

The contraption holds GIRDLEBABY like a shelled slug.
Her rupture sits sweetly a block atop her pel-vi bones.
GIRDLEBABY grunts w/each waddled step.
Loose innards are solidified by the ruthless girdle.

GIRDLEMOMMA: Have fun at school, my golden princess!

GIRDLEBABY is thumbing thru the ancient
cosmos of Vogue. A blonde humanoid once humanish is displayed
in spectacular body part: 4 red lip & 2 white leg.
7 males crouch around her in gangbang formation.
The photo female is prey; a pulpy vacancy
levitates between her parallel white legs.

GIRDLEBABY, to herself: Is this what phallus hunts?

Her oval fingers fumble madly along inside the magazine.
It reads:

HOT-TIPPED THIGH GAP
34 WAYS TO BURN FLAB
THE BONELESS GAPE
74% ORGANIC FLESH SPACE

GIRDLEBABY looks down at her own 8 legs
erupted along the room.
Her outward corpuscles swallow
every remnant of donut
& tear. She jiggles her thighyams.

GIRDLEBABY: I am haunted.

GIRDLEBABY wobbles to the kitchen. She chooses the fillet,
left on the counter & stabbed thru a swordfish.
The tool is both flexible & precise, she thinks,
wiping its fish-crud between her wristfolds.

GIRDLEBABY, whispering to foreign femurs: I will dig to you.

(Digging sequence :
very gory w/lotso
yellow blood cackling &
bone exposure madness)

Satisfied, she flaps her gutted thighskin over the other,
performing the crossed leg.

GIRDLEBABY, yearnburning: Do you sense my vacancy?

GIRDLEMOMMA struts down ice cream aisle.
Dairy cows slam their hooves against the glass
doors, cream-screaming. Having never seen a dairy cow’s
breath, GIRDLEMOMMA takes a SnapChat &
transfers cow Oxygen to GIRDLEBABY’s phone.

At home GIRDLEBABY’s phone flashes on the curve
of her clawfoot tub; a puff of air emits in2
the loose breath of GIRDLEBABY.
On the opposite curve-edge is a sharp whale-slice knife.
She blows away the cow air; she wants to be ready.

GIRDLEBABY: I want to be ready.

The clawfoot tub is filled to brim w/melted fudgesicle.
GIRDLEBABY lays w/o motion,
taking in the chocoblood aroma.
Her spyder-vein ass will bleed out the most, she thinks,
as the loose phalanges massage her fat folds,
plump w/eager blood.

At the grocery store GIRDLEMOMMA takes a selfie
w/the lobster tank & sends it to GIRDLEBABY.
She captions the photo:

THE GIRDLELORD PAINTED THEIR NAILS RED!1!1 LOL

GIRDLEBABY picks up the blubber slicer & pushes it to her
teets. Suddenly Kid Rock’s “Bawitdaba” blares from her phone;
it is GIRDLEMOMMA’s selfie, lobster squeal permeated
into Kid Rock howls. She smiles, remembering prom.
GIRDLEBABY rises from the clawfoot tub. The bottom-suck
phalanges continue to grasp for her ass. She drips w/chocosugar,
spinspraying the white walls brown. Her hand gestures are dramatic.

GIRDLEBABY, rapping: Diggy, said the boogy, said up jump the boogy!

Having seen the posters for GIRDLEBABY’s demise,
Humanoids exist outside of the home. They have waited for the past hour.

Humanoid #1: what is fat but being suicide?
Humanoid #2: clogged artery bloodshed
Humanoid #1: nothing’s happening, let’s go get a fudgesicle

**

KATY COUSINO is an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Her interests include the horror genre, fat politics, and My Little Pony. THE GIRDLES is an ongoing project taking over Katy’s world in a lovely, suffocating kind of way. Another excerpt of this verse play can be found at SEVEN CORNERS.

Drew Kalbach

September 10, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

COMPRESSION

HOW I FEEL about slanderous things
that fact that I’m a poet is the gift
redeemed two step verification
for promotional use only your poorly worded grift
track back monetary slack
second monday and everything is terrible
how to locate a provider
I’ll never be gremlin painting rich
$25 PCP open act I’m inserted mass-mailing
guaranteed money-maker

Fear not the machines of the future
unless fucked swarms of microbots eat your face
in slow-mo panning shots cinematic beauty
but you go dark no backups no uploads just grating pain then gone
realm of unquantifiable abstraction
soft and impractical and insufficiently new
like textual body practices specific to my avatar’s identity
three very wooden pieces of pottery
I had a good birthday but please hire me
conspiracy theory had failed to produce

Love love will tear us apart again
better them than me
Marcus needed a little adventure in his life
in mine more overly produced horn sections
heavy boom of 80s background smash
PA CYBER supports xpn my family customizes my curriculum
I shun them for it
my learning opportunities reduced
in frenchie wine and heavy german sauce
Eddie snows and grabs a name

**

DREW KALBACH is from Philadelphia. He is the author of Spooky Plan (Gobbet 2014). Read more of his stuff at www.drewkalbach.com.

Gabriel Ojeda-Sague

August 31, 2015December 2, 2021 tvverk

POEM FOR ELEGUÁ

Believe me, I’m dealing with the ragged aroma. Ways of waiting are known to me as the miracle he and you promised. My lapse into uncontrolled remembering is the symptom of a nine month fever, my animal system. In bed, healing, I am still wondering where Eleguá is and the color of his shells, how he might trick the violence that is always landing. There isn’t a projection of machinery like there used to be. It’s full of lights, individual, unarmed. When the lover is also the defense and constellating of survival, surfaces in contact, folding.

When I exist,
I am complicit.

The tongue
shakes
to shape
the worth of a moment.

I’m also afraid of spiders. Where is the license for instrumentalizing? I keep showing you: the delays are getting to me, more and more. If I told you I needed a worth of images, would you tell me I’m losing it? This is no way to excite a lady. The cold mimeograph of my dim certainty for plant-life: always waiting.

If Eleguá’s hair
is thick and separate
and soaked

THAT SHOULD FEEL REALLY GOOD

Good evening, this is Marie again with you and this video is going to be completely dedicated to your relaxation. In this video I’m going to use my 3D microphone for a full effect of my presence with you in this video. I’m going to be doing different things around the viewer, or yourself, to hopefully fall asleep faster or make you feel more relaxed, at peace, and ready for your night’s sleep.

I guess we’ll start with the loudest part of the video and that is the tapping. And that is gonna—I have my wonder brush and it’s—I truly enjoy the sound of it when you run your fingers over it, over the bristles; actually feels—nice, as well as sounds nice. And if you can tap, right on the edge, just like it sounds. Quite relaxing. So I could do that from here, on one side, for you, and then the same on the other side. Run my fingers through the bristles with gentle tapping. That might feel really good. The tapping sounds remind me of the sound of the rain, something gentle. I like it. I also like the sounds of brushing.

So now, if you want to completely relax, I would like to blow smoke into you. Just a moment. Now I have this wonderful oil warmer and lilac fragrance oil, warming oil, and sometimes when you want to relax you just put a few drops in the—this holder, candle holder; it’s made out of real stone and it’s not that hot, it’s not very heavy, but the top part is hot, because the candle is positioned just under the top part that actually warms up the oil, and this creates the fragrance and a little bit of smoke. So right now I’m going to blow it into you to help fully create an aura and atmosphere of magic and tranquility. I’m going to blow it to you from ear to ear, starting from here. Now the other ear, blowing gently all around you, covering you in the smoke. Now I’m gonna go around to hopefully get your mind clouded. I’m gonna blow smoke all around you: from your head on top to the back of your neck, to your spine, now to the other side, now again to the front. Sometimes its very nice to get very relaxed by breathing in the aroma of the warming oils, especially when the smoke is not so bad; it’s not so harsh, the smell is very mild, barely noticeable really.

So, I’m gonna put it down for now, and now I want you to look into my eyes as I’m gonna be massaging your temples on each side, helping you relax further away, helping you drift away—as long as you trust me. As I rub your temples from side to side, in clockwise direction, I want you to imagine a happy place of yours where nothing bad is. It’s your happy place. It doesn’t have to be a real place: you can fantasize and create your own place, it can be heaven, it can be under the tree next to your house, it can be in your little personal garden. I’m going to scratch your scalp a little bit, just like so, massaging your skin, tugging on the hair a little bit—if you let me. Sometimes we all come from work tired, or from school, or after we finish with the housework, and we come home and want to relax and want to find someone to pet us on the head and say how good we are. We want someone to comfort us, to tell us that we’re so great, that we’re appreciated. You are appreciated: I would like to be that place for you right now. I would like to protect you, to comfort you, to help you relax and forget about your trouble, whatever it is. I’ll just scratch behind your ear right here and on the top of the head. I’ll scratch right around your head. Mhmmm, that should feel good. That might release some tension from your body and from your soul, from your mind, help you relax, fall asleep, feel protected and safe. And on the other side, the same thing. I’m gonna scratch on top of your head, behind your ear again. That should feel really good, doesn’t it?

That should feel like nothing matters anymore. This is your moment to relax: to let go, to forget, and in the back of your head too.

Okay, now I’m going to gently massage the back of your head and the back of your shoulders. I’m gonna squeeze the muscle and I’m going to let it go, releasing any tension that could be in your shoulders, in your upper back. It should feel really good. So if you let me we’ll start from the side. There you go. I’m going to squeeze the muscle and let it go and then gently rub it between my hands, back and forth. That should be quite pleasant. That should help you relax further. Help you, hopefully, get rid of any aches that you might have. Squeezing the muscle and letting it go. Again squeezing it and letting it go. Very well. And I’m gonna do the same thing with the other side, if you don’t mind. Same thing. Squeezing your shoulder muscle. It’s so tight. We’re gonna work at it. Squeezing it with both of my hands, pressing it hard but gentle, and then letting it go. Just like so. That should feel really good. You should feel relaxed. Again squeezing it and letting it go. I hope you feel relaxed. I hope you feel at peace. I hope you feel like you’re ready to sleep soon.

And for the end, I’m going to tickle you a little bit. I’m hoping that might send you tingles down your—down your spine. Sometimes, when somebody tickles you with a feather, the touch of the feather can be so ticklish, but in a good way. If it’s with good intentions, it could actually calm you down. So if you don’t mind, I would like to run this feather along your face, gently, barely touching, just a little bit. It might tickle just slightly, but not hard, just a little bit. Running it along the side and then on your cheeks, into your chin, into your neck. Same thing on the other side: running it over your forehead, over your eyes, gently, over your cheek. Each feather touching your skin sends you chills: over your neck and then on your forehead, around your eyes, over your nose, over your cheek, over your lips, your chin. I’m hoping you’re enjoying this. I’m hoping that this might help you relax. Help you go to sleep faster. I can tickle your ear, just a little bit, just slightly if you let me. Just slightly. The other ear. That might tickle you just a little bit.

So now, I want you to forget about everything. Try to feel happy. Try to feel like you’re ready to drift away. Try to imagine your happy place. Go to it. Don’t worry about anything. Everything is going to be alright. Sleep. Sleep. Have a good night. Sweet dreams. Sleep. Sleep.

**

GABRIEL OJEDA-SAGUE is a latino queer Leo living in Philadelphia, PA. His work has been published in Open House, Assaracus, TINGE, Gone Lawn, Cleaver Magazine, and APIARY Magazine, among others. He is the author of the chapbooks JOGS, a conceptual re-writing of the 1977 book “The Joy of Gay Sex,” and Nite [Chickadee]’s (GaussPDF, 2015), a collection of Cher’s tweets on systematic racism and violence.