This long poem by Lotte L. S. gathers fractured perspectives in a persistent and persisting voice: forthright yet observant, not impervious to beauty, but keeping one eye to the deadening structures of capital and the state. The body at the centre of these perspectives is a little anonymous, a little fungible, enlivened by moments of sexuality and sensuousness that stretch beyond their immediate present. When she hypothesizes that “time is just perspective, and / perspective: time,” perspective emerges by turns as a situated limitation and a site of possibility. Annual and diurnal rhythms overlap, appear in fragments, feel disorienting or eternal; the speaker is suddenly in a narrative and just as suddenly outside it. And she is spoken through by other poets who might share those perspectives and experiences. “Imitating crown shyness,” her life is apart from others yet shaped by them exactly, inhabiting the spaces they have vacated or left behind. – The Editors and the Poetry Staff
Twelve Days of 21st Century Rain
A voice rang out from the boiler in visceral encounter:
“You must change your life.”
The hibiscus moved in the breeze,
everything else staying still.
Well: the seagulls, the seagulls.
Carbon monoxide had already claimed the last inhabitant —
as if to misread sleep
like to think of myself high up at the window
imitating crown shyness
continually changing faulty light bulbs
at the ends of summer
hesitating to thrust myself into others’ lives,
other lives. A life,
all £430 worth of it. Dangerous
of course
to draw parallels: tried the detectors,
tried the weekly whole-building alarms,
tried to imagine I could change my life —
her dancing beneath the pines, told me:
to love without doubt
is to fuck without desire,
and yet the nectarines are still ripe and juicy on the table
at this time of year
but I want them hard as can be,
actualised at the ends of a midnight-blue corset dream —
hands enough to touch yourself
and watch the starlings murmur,
a whole host of fish
unionising at the same time every year
to swim
a full circle and disappear,
wondering
if time is just perspective, and
perspective: time.
It touched me where it hurt,
but the hurting felt good —
seagulls watching from each rooftop,
St George’s Cross flags razed across every allotment plot
long road of curtains
rippled open, crystallise my senses
alone with a boiler
that doesn’t emit a smell or sound or sight
and all the windows are open —
miniature ballet dancers twirling off the sill
in small succession
someone screaming, “I’m gonna fucking kill you
you motherfucking son of a bitch”
cries streaming over from the dark-bright street below,
weekly Tuesday fireworks
jacked-up and disseminating in rounds from the beach.
In the almost darkness
we cannot delegate “our” desire,
seagull shit dripping down the windows
in hot, thick tangles
of a flat last inhabited, and I would have to say
“OK, thanks. I didn’t know.” Why is this night
different from all the others?
The emphasis to fall on the asking,
the making of an unchanged life
awake until sunrise —
avoiding the surprise of sleep
gave me dreams:
trees lining boulevards in the south of France
you absentmindedly on your knees in the corner
tipping something softly down the back of your throat.
Do you know it?
I tried to laugh and understand
the pieces of human movement,
one glance capturing a shape that emerged from them all:
the fascist compost of the allotments,
green was the forest drenched with shadows
of my own lack —
I decided I’d rather throw every broccoli head in the bin.
And my own: a tenant to evict, landlord
a penis to guillotine,
police sirens ricocheting across the curtains
unduly feminised in their flutterings,
pink lilies bursting from the vase on the floor
telling me: “I want to live deliberately” —
“I want to live alive”
headphones on
means I can’t hear them
coming down the boulevard
coming down the high street
the road I inhabit that leads so clearly to the sea —
striding their guillotined dicks
down the deserted streets.
A woman was arrested the other morning,
I saw it from the window: cops cuffing her to the car,
miniature ballet dancers
spinning from the windowsill
gliding through the soft lace of the air
to pinch cop tyres flat
with their tightly pricked slippers.
He literally wrote a worldview
wherein she “went” out the window
of his thirty-fourth-floor New York apartment
in a blue bikini
and a judge signed off on it.
Awareness, or blossom:
an archived commodity
in which
perspective is the removed corset
often police ourselves
to take off our clothes —
but what’s another way to look at this?
What else
could you have asked?
If you don’t recognise me
among the treed-up, jacked-up roads
the logical supposition
of boulevards I have never been
it is because I took off all my clothes
in my most confrontational
means I can’t hear them
edgelit and hooting in the trees
a politicised people
suddenly and casually
wondering if you were going to take your socks off
before you came.
These days I am trying hard not to come so consistently —
instead asking my mother, “how are you feeling today?”
wondering if I’ll ever see her
dance beneath the pines,
fantasise about suffocating my landlord
with deliberate marmite: a whole feast of mugwort
on the bedside table; gave me dreams of killing children, told me
to dare imagining
it’s not a thing you can touch
Notes: ‘Dangerous / of course / to draw parallels’ is lifted from ‘Sunset, December, 1993’ by Adrienne Rich […Yet more dangerous to write / as if there were a steady course, we and our poems / protected: the individual life, protected’] // ‘and all the windows are open’ is reworked from the final line of Gloria Dawson’s poem ‘What Dreaming Makes.’ // ‘We cannot delegate “our” desire’ is reworked from Communiqué 7 by the Angry Brigade // ‘green was the forest drenched with shadows’ is lifted from The Spring Flowers Own by Etel Adnan. // ‘the soft lace of the air’ is reworked from ‘Poem for Haruko’ by June Jordan. // Carl Andre claimed that the artist Ana Mendieta “went out the window” of his thirty-fourth-floor apartment, wearing a blue bikini, early on the morning of September 8, 1985. He was accused and acquitted for her death, choosing a judge over a jury. “She made me change her light bulbs. She was afraid of heights. She would never go near the window,” Carolee Schneeman later said. // ‘Awareness, or blossom:’ is reworked from ‘There’s an affinity between awareness and blossom.’ in ‘Hello, the Roses’ by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. // ‘perspective is the removed corset’ is lifted from ‘After Vuillard’ by Sarah Maclay, first shared at Community of Writers 2019. // ‘to dare imagining’ is lifted from To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, edited by Dilar Dirik, David Levi Strauss, Michael Taussig and Peter Lamborn Wilson.