ZOE DARSEE
With Feeling
Let me pull myself together.
The important, recurrent question is where the light hits.
That is I watch where it shits. I ask for this with complete abandon.
I want proof, I want provenance. Show me where the light is shitting. I’m sorry
I want the geodesic distances. Diarrhetic suns.
Oh I want childhood. You’re telling me I can’t have that. Listen
I was childhood. I travelled so much I can weave
longitudes into major works of art. I get famous. I got famous. Suddenly
everyone is talking about longitudes. This gets famous
because no one understands distance. I don’t know the difference anymore. In
this way I start bleating like a dove
onstage and it is familiar. Not the image, which
will never be famous, but the math
of this performance and its practical hysterics, its loveable and
predictable gymnastics. The method of it. I don’t know the difference. I dove
like a bleak instrument and memory becomes a pinky
in the muffled hum of void. That is I get stuck
in the holes of audience and I can’t
say a thing. They’re just
so passionate. They speak. The effort of my wings flapping makes a sound
as loud as an imagined rain and symptomatic of
fists on violins and hamster wheels and you are
beating the instrument the way you think you ought to have
but didn’t. Am I crazy
for being yoga pilled when I’m a conductor
of transcendent victimhood and anger or
am I crazy for making myself into a flute that journals
of its own disaster? Imagine
the porn that could come of my private orchestra. All I know
is the difference between a dj and a live set. Just imagine
how deep inside you it would reach in
heat. The steam of a thousand hands
making sentences
which waterfall into crevices and
we hear
in ourselves a longing long enough we tune out the sound of war
behind and in front of us. Is that
the purpose of literature? No,
that’s violins. Ever since
doves hum the radio and AI writes
TV I’m insensitive. Like I’m
taking or making speed but in an envelope
of sound. Now where’s
the spotlight? Now where’s mine
now tell me
where you want it now
buy my subscription and listen
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Untitled
The sky dropped its bliss a while ago, but bliss had already dropped birds on the sky and it sounded like an orchestra, but orchestra was already dropping its blithe architecture on our ears like screaming curtains, but that wasn’t who murdered us on long bird legs.
In image ignorance, I lie under lithe architecture, unsure of death’s fences.
Dark squares, dark squares, my body, my body, fence, fence, boy, boy, murder, murder, birds, birds, birds
I live in the sun’s napping. What life makes one sour but frequent. I
shouldn’t
riddle but my body is wrapped up
bolted into uterus
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Bezirk (District)
In grass I must love hunting I must love the fluttering grass which I am hunting in grass fluttering if I am in grass I must love grass hunting
In mourning I must love fluttering must I love fluttering if I am glass mourning shadow that flutters in the grass loving
In world when I mount architecture when I am mooring like shadow fluttering in architecture do I mourn what could be fluttering
In architecture I know fluttering shade of architecture is it love which I am hunting still what should I from shadow now distill
In hunting I am hunter I know bird grass and shadow when my shadow buries itself in grass like bird in human architecture
In shadow do I flutter am I like bird paranoid of hunter am I like architect paranoid of open fluttering field
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Bad fugue
observe
the subject
brought in by force
on all fours passed around
I’ll tell you what
I am
the subject
the organ
of illegal time
to be musical is illegal
for what is
a tine brought
out and up
to be told
when the subject is
the subject
is being out of tune with
telling telling
now tell it again
with the music1
1. G Minor, BMV 578
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Zoe Darsee was born about noon on a Tuesday. Later they founded TABLOID Press with Nat Marcus in Berlin. This work continues. Their chapbook BELL LOGIC (2022) is available from Spiral Editions and a pamphlet, Anzündkind, is out from The Creative Writing Department. They hold an MFA from the University of Notre Dame. More at zoedarsee.com.