from Bib
5.1
I feel at home here
I follow an impulse
wonder if I shouldn’t try
to be still with my thoughts
the tarot cards say something about
authenticity, messy bits
I sip champagne
ambivalence can be so powerful
& generational
the family is stirring in the front room
looking out the window making demands
here, the family is a microcosm of the state
if I re-remember
the family goes outside & back inside
without purpose
except to say, “we are free”
an all seeing corner
with a ghoul girl in it
pressed against egg shell white
the home has lovely moldings
dust bunnies, buckling floors
crawl to be closer to the breaking
lying in the sunny spot
surrounded by gentle dust
is this civilization?
the failures of instruction & interpretation
are generative, dangerous
civilized ghoul, “the murders go on”
I live in a yellow house
refuge
with a raccoon in the wall
I live
the desire to disavow it
in the yellow house
memory & imagination
patch of meadow
boney sockets of a tooth
I’d rather be in the act itself
what a strange thing it is!
the cadence of the day
I keep deep inside me
am I recalling it?
because it treats time differently
“immemorial”
when I was four…
distinct pleasure & aloneness in the bedroom
window next to the bed, maybe
peach
blue
geometry
running tongue over teeth
fastened to the ground
no roots
from in/fertile
these poems are being written in real time starting August 17th, 2020 while preparing and going through fertility treatment and insemination using IUI
and various fertility meds
1.
today I took my first dose of Clomiphene
2 100mg pills in the morning
I take it on the 5th-9th day of my menses
it’s an estrogen modulator
for my purposes it stimulates ovulation
2 large fibroids grow in my uterus in 5 months
the endocrinologist is shocked
having removed 6 large fibroids in December
I’ve been bragging all over town about
my ute (a gender congruent term for uterus)
& its super benign tumor growing capabilities
I’m trying to make meaning
integrate some new epistemology
like rushing waves
like a drain
fibroids & imagining gestation do a lot for dysphoria/integration
having a body, I haven’t felt more dis/connected
I tell a friend about my “father time” gender
my invisible lavender beard
my gender is midwestern
my wife makes me a t-shirt that says my gender on it
she takes a picture
I wear it to bed sometimes
though once for her birthday I tucked it into my mom jeans
I’m watching Grey’s Anatomy
I’m only half way through
everyone has died & been resurrected
I’m writing this 6 months into the pandemic
I’m naming it here so you know this is poetry
my friend asks me if I am afraid
of the pandemic & the fascism
of course I am, but I’m not only afraid
2.
if there are tunnels between worlds
which world
which tunnel
am I?
let’s talk about what’s happening to the planet
the art in the gallery is glacial
one party per bench
the silhouettes are fossils
memory
a friend texts me while I park outside
the museum
she is pregnant with a “potential Pisces”
…
threading catheter
survived & not only survived
to kind of look into the future
in the arctic there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty
suddenly I find myself emerging
& I guess that whole tunnel thing is a metaphor
for futurity
the beauty of tissue paper & glue
the sound of scenery, hello
I overheard a friendship in the gallery
maybe James Turrell’s, Into the Light
is about time
or I get lost in time in the pink fog/light
the blue light convinces me that it is actually cold
I look for my breath like a child, briefly still
in the snow
disoriented by the sweat under my mask
Britt Billmeyer-Finn is a poet, playwright, and social worker living in Northampton, MA. She has published two books of poetry including the meshes (Black Radish Books, 2015) and Slabs (Timeless Infinite Light, 2016). They co-curate the living room reading series, The But Also, and are co-founder of Threshold Academy, a future bookstore and current alternative education space in western MA.