SOME WORDS
Low tide
Sand stretched taut
Polished and buffed to a mirrored sheen
Reflecting the end of the light
The breeze tousles the film of water
Strums its aura
Ripples radiate out in all directions
They break upon the waves
And rest to cradle the sky
Low Tide (an extract)
(im)possible performances, 2021
Life Drawn From a Distance
masticated to a pulp
a cast
of the inside of my mouth
with
lock jaw
descriptions clenched between
indentations
Muffled repetitions
Feeling familiar boundaries
Gathering breath
A faint tang ruffles a memory
Teetering on the edge of recognition
Somehow they escape
Only not quite as intended
In clicks and whirs and glottal stops
Notes
vibrations
Scratched into the air
The trace left hanging
You shimmer like a mirage
Slowly taking form out of the corner of my eye
An uncanny sense of disease.
you barely know what to do with me
Where do I fit?
Why don’t you ask me?
...and maybe even listen to the response.
I step into myself as viewed by another
Words marble across my flesh
Cool, damp
Slowly seizing to an itch
I lie in the sun
observing the surface crack and flake off
You scrunch between my toes
I let you hang for a moment and then fall
To form a new strata
Something more to be buried
I watch you swathed in blankets
Buffeted with soft energy
A life drawn from a distance
Extended and abstracted
Past the points at which we meet
That lie with assumptions
And tangle in a new configuration.
You pick at the knots
Unravelling a gesture
Drawing them out into filaments
Barely whisps
Trembling
With fingers flexed
Writing in response, text 1 (an extract)
MEANDER, Köln, 2020
They find you walking in extended circles
Treading ashes already sown
You can’t or won’t tell us where you’ve been
Not here
or anywhere at all
No way of mapping the presence of your senses
The tense slips
I slide into you
And there you stop not willing to engage
Your shell curves in front of me hanging empty on the hook
You’ve already replaced yourself
Shed us like skin
‘You wouldn’t understand’
She opens her hand and closes it again
I listen to the gaps picture the tongue rolling inside its cage
‘How could I?’
Instead I stand looking up at the leaves as they float down
Fallen pollen golden a slight sheen
They sweep you into a petri dish
‘You’ve covered some distance’
Or so they tell us
But you’ve been here the whole time the same shade as the shadows
From the next room
I hear you bumping along the ground
we are hidden overgrown
resting on the edge waiting for the brittle concrete to crumble
its lips lean over whispering to you in an empty breath birds chittering waves crashing into the wind
surveying the crest you launch the thread a hopeful hopeless action
it rebounds gold flashes the sheen hums at high frequency before flickering out
you mark the moment with a single note
she blesses you with an endless return and adds another half-life to her orchestra
edging your feet up you feel for a perch
coal
graphite
chalk
clutched tight
stretching with delicate balance you mark your reach then let yourself slip
you greet the surface it shudders afraid of its own fragility
your body traces the curve sketching the descent
the sound abrades then abates harsh and sore
a dull pop as the lid is levered open excreting a sickly sweet sweat
the scent lingers on my tongue and coats my teeth
the spoon slips inside and returns to you an artefact encased in sap
holding it up the light illuminates a viscous halo
the amber syrup reflects the mustard lichen adorning the surface
golden everything playing at sunshine
Writing in response (an extract)
(re)collecting (f)ears by selina bonelli, 2019