ARTICLE 50
Right through here and yes
we’re going to take a left no
right no that’s Sophie’s room
no Rosa’s room
no Vivienne’s room
yes here
turn now
cock your head
low beams
look tragic
good girl
sorry about me
chatterbox that’s what they
call me around here
chatterbox but
there are some things to say about what not to
you know
say
ha ha
Only a certain type
of talking
e.g. I used to be
in pieces but
now I can be seen and not just as a
scant glaze
or stereogram
prickled pink on the bulb
of a magic eye hot with sight
so take the past as a diagram, stick to the facts
think object and subject, how touching took turns into
he did then I felt then he did then I felt then
he did then I didn’t then he did and I didn’t then
he did and I didn’t feel like
doing anything
just like usual
when on me were the things
getting done
lots of them, many times or sizes
the long one which was shorter than
the longest one which took, well
a few decades of just
lying there
not doing
nothing
even lying down, you see, was a coincidence it just happens
to be the thing you do when you’re not doing anything
when in this planar state you are simply
done to
looking up at the doers on you doing
a personhood
because being a person means
doing
anything really
like working here
you don’t have to be mad to but
I am a rancid accident self aborting and
abysmally unable to get through a single day without
hail mary hail mary x new labour’s tonsils
three taps for UKIP and four for McKinsey
Mother of Fuck and her neoprene hard-on
gobs on the froth of the glimpse of the warmth you want
pricking through dreaming to start again drinking
the water engulfing the specks packed and sinking
a hieroglyph of your critique of the living
a welt of meniscus that aspirates women
for you I have come from my house
in a small shit town, 3 buses
and a walk and six or seven
dirty looks from those
who cannot bear it
a filthy old woman
with a home-made fish sandwich
entitled, she says, to one fuck
nothing special just
the kind of fuck that other people have, modest
in both proportion and extension, not to mention
necrotic, I have a voucher, she says, I came
in just my nightie, my rubber gloves, lunch box of Klonopin,
slippers I put fags out with, kick tomorrows with
and large enigmatic lance of rosacea diving all the way down to
below the knee a stick and poke of the great Laura Dern, tremulous
in Wild At Heart before she gets raped or thinks she will (pessimist!)
scratched on with abandon and glossed with an egg white
which is all to say
contrary to those who thought it wasn’t smart enough
it’s my second favourite work of art.
But you mustn’t mind me
I used to work for the council in town
and I got sent here to be the integer for girls like you
from the front desk we can see it all, symptoms and
keywords and intentions, kept like small remains
in match boxes, each scenario has its own
mouse-sized coup d’etat with options rank and winding like
gilded intestines in summertime Paris, two boxes if you’re very
intellectual: let’s go
your room is upstairs
above Sophie’s room and Sophie’s baby
oh dear you can probably hear it now
ghastly, the things a baby has to say
but we find that they’re honest
anyway, pet
blankets in the cupboard
white round ones in the purse
take one or two or
don’t let me chit chat chatter on
chatterbox they call me
no no really
ha ha
hold on
shut up
be careful
very fucking careful
about words
§
Stoya
As a whore and a bitch I
have kicked myself out
of abstraction the cum in my hair
and blue scratches are very proud of myself
whilst headed for the boundary
which is not a line but a distant
point infinitely small
and illiterate, throwing up its hands
frightened
I have walked for days towards it but it
recedes, plummets like swan song and
by noon is back to the farther bank
warily resting. Reaching my hand ahead I call south
and with all my heat I whisper no why