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CHRISTINE KELLY



Life-Worlders in Your Area


I haven’t defined                everyday life
because I reframed its morphic mobility

moving objects       mops    candles   sieves

around a clean kitchen,

this apparition has         the space junk gene
                                      for transformation

appearing in such forms as vertical blinds
begetting fog on millimetric paper,
which through pin-dot holes reads

DAILY NORMAL PERSONAL LIFE

fold the towels          hear the news      
teach me how to life-world
such that it is understood as life-worlding

silence isn’t neutral     did you have a chance to eat

stay with me here        you’ll be a pro in no time

through vertical blinds and unexplored
disimprovement mechanisms

what would be the last thing to disappear
if you swallowed yourself whole?

midnight
a midnight of cellular function


––––


JACKPOT













Part ! of !!

This is the best fungus fracas I’ve ever.
You hired a conundrum of signs

to raise and drop the curtain                                               

transform LAW      into the DIVINE

I can’t wait to see
what the raised curtain dramatizes
& what disappears when it falls!

I performed too—
I’m uncredited.
                          That’s fine, I mean
the desire to know and name this figure,
this    “I”    attached to a frame
(vicissitudes of interpretation and all)

add hat + glasses + add
non-narrative associations
                                  resolving in the vector field



















Part !! of !!


Is it normal to cry
during a massage? (with pictures)
Here is the social contract as 
a geodesic object.

Scientists are just starting to study women’s bodies
and they are surprised by what they have found.

They can also suddenly decide
that decongestants don’t work.

How can they say that
with that look about their skulls?

They can say it with
tremendous uncertainty,
anticipating a canceled bodily event.

These are my arms                        mud
making an outline for an ideal        mud
nothingness inspired by                      mud
outreach to everything                          mud
I’ve ever been through                           mud
a subjective everything                           mud
not an everything everything                   mud
but rather the floor                                mud
in contrast to the door, the whale,      mud
the ceiling of meteorological mmmmmmmudslides


––––


Someone Else’s Performance

Subject is
histrionic devices
of which
   it itchy
   itches his
   Bic pen
   inscription
which dictated
                      hark, harlot
and I’m           so did.

Define amulet,
thin
        line prowler
trademark
perfect sneer
this is
mannequin in
their hair
its bits
are far
from dumb
oh my
   in my
2nd     life     idea
     it’s a real
          life question
a real life
               Q
for A
    a takeaway
            the animal
what is fever?
what is accident?
example of accident
animal has.

The jewels
in jewel-encrusted
energies → rubies!

One can make a life
of scrappy prayer
for extra scraps.

Less generous
ones in there
call my bluff.

My performance
is glad stuff,
but desperate

and glass,
ore like
someone else’s.


––––
 

Someone Else’s Bluff
 

This participation model
has atomized.
         So what can help it
solidify into a thing
that might anesthetize
our relation to scaffolding?

Our verbal agreement meaning
ceci n’est pas une
pharma-clogged pipe

I’m a skin doctor
but I collect art
I collect
list of visionaries document
I collect
registration symbol

Is this a coven? 
Am I a clown?

13"x3.5"
14.5"x3.5"
17"x3.5"

Part of someone else's bluff.


––––

Christine Kelly is the author of the forthcoming collection of poems Allow Me to Slip on Something a Little More Hypocycloid (PRROBLEM, 2025) and the chapbooks Food Gas Lodging Liquid Solid (Creative Writing Department, 2023), Dopamine Agonist Destiny Forest (Theme Can Print Editions, 2018), and Pudding Time (DoubleCross Press, 2015). She lives in North Adams, MA and also makes drawings and embroideries.


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