Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Tuesday poem #246 : Anna Gurton-Wachter : Spiral for Julian

I pick up an object that surrounds the deathbed and I say to it, “I am looking for something to write with.” My devotion to the good-enough object holds supreme. How my bodysuit flows gently downstream. Once I stood over a facedown body and said the words, “I am looking for something to write with.” No response from the wrecked sprawl of limbs and I can’t believe I said, as if unaware of all that was happening, “I am looking for something to write with.”

What was happening was only forfeiture. All spaces that are evacuated are mourned while we pass through them. My fantasy is for none of this to resolve. “Let it not resolve,” said the woman face down burying herself. I was glad too about the silence. My attention stops in the soft moment of the deathbed. Deathbeds are slept in sometimes. And thrown out. Call up the image of the universe as a whole. I am sorting the good-enough objects from the objects which merely soothe. Anna Gurton-Wachter is a writer, editor and archivist. Her chapbooks include The Abundance Chamber Works Alone (2017, Essay Press), Blank Blank Blues (2016, Horse Less Press) and CYRUS (2014, Portable Press @ Yo Yo Labs). Other writing has appeared in Elderly, 6x6, No Dear, The Organism for Poetic Research, The Brooklyn Rail and elsewhere. She also contributed to the Essay Press digital collection of post-election writings Radio 11.18.16. Anna edits and makes book with DoubleCross Press and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
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