bloom

from BLOOM

"A body takes to other bodies like it takes to water.  When I was five, I stood in the Atlantic and let the earth move under me. That drop in the stomach between what we feel and see to be real. The keel of gravity and motion sickness.  Still,  we careen into each other in bars.  In the  subway.  Our fingers lingering on the necks of strangers.  Trailing along their hips. How to know what we touch in any given day, or what touches us. What we shed in the evening--eyelash, hair, epidermis-- comes back each morning. How to know where my hands have been when they have been everywhere. This body that collects other bodies in its crevices and nooks.  The hooks that string us together like fish on a line."            

  

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Despite saying I probably needed a certain amount of distance to write about the current state of events, and in fact a 2-3 month span of being unable to write at ALL really, I find myself mid-project on a series called BLOOM--named so because of the ways illness (actual, metaphorical) blooms in the body, in society, in the world. Also the way nature this spring, despite humans and their stupid diseases, continued to bloom while we were still dying. While people were being killed by the virus, by the governement, by the police. But even still, I usually need more distance, and who knows how much time there is for any of us.

 

I don't know for sure what will come of it, or if I'll hate it for awhile when I'm done. It makes a nice pairing with the OVERLOOK poems, that were less about The Shining and more about capitalism in America as told through the film. Also, maybe, with another series I have planned for later this year, might be an entirely new book project coming into being and taking shape (and because I'm weird like that, I think I already have a really good title I'm considering.)

This week has been a little wonky since my Chromebook was on the fritz and I was waiting for a new one, plus I was heading off to the Library and that ate up a lot of mental energy, but I hope to continue writing daily again through the remainder of the summer. We'll see where it goes...