Estimated Standard Deduction
Dry it up, when they want you to stop crying.
Are we separate or are we agitating.
I made marks on my face that were invisible.
We only want you if you are FOR us, if you are on our side.
Only I am IN your side, says Eve, miming the story about her forthcoming.
What are we if not archive—
Stand alone or beside, made in one image and duplicated,
albeit twisted.
The legs hang, they just dwindle.
Your white suit skin and division.
No wonder they wanted us to hate the earth, that color.
Which is to say I can only see my own toes
and belly. Flipped underside, my hordes
my tapestries, my tax. I pity
my violent heart.
What we touch we might be touching, notochord
plucked and humming, heart kept
going; suspended by strings
crisscrossed; why am I up here
why down.
All these towers, I never knew you
though you came in the door
dusting off tools I came to stone again.
Woman bodied spider legs
and the immune dream
post mortem, I accept this criminality
in the house in the cave in the corner in the floor
in the cellar in the table in the sheet in the blanket
in the cover in the bed in the hold in the roots
in the door flattening.
Naught, slips by me in the water,
the moneyed existence my saline choking to wake me.
In the bath the salt and soda balance
and my body in its own casing. Years for which I was not here
years the post mortem how are you doing
sued or prescribed by known agitators
watching.
Day by day we make these little raw-ings,
put the camera under the dancer
to see the girl goddess, I play a maid,
where the eternal child passed into bird form,
for you the soft wood
or how they say it: the future starts now.
Spiders in the room at the front of the house
people in the back
spiders in the front of the house
people in the back
eyes in the front
eyes in the back
going to the people
and white world you live in
and world you don't,
government everything
government pivot pilot,
for anyone needing matter
for anyone needing the world you live in.
Since we trust the phone
since we trust application.
Terrycloth, masonry, steel wool coiled
scrub a back a day of talk as that.
Suspicious aviary, suspicious legs over the bridge,
suspicious spark.
Orienting behaviors and twitches,
mess the leaves but space between them
you walk back and forth along the floor
you know what I mean,
somehow we did, you in another room in another state
but knowing like this, knitting your ugly scarf,
talking on the phone long-distance.
My life apology
to paint again myself in a little shed, in a forest,
striped bark and my own skin
beside it
makes this room around us.
At some point it didn't matter people were there
in the dark, and the paper shapes in the frame and the body underneath just
holding
form but not mattering.
People as background, as structure underneath but not essential—
We touch we might be touching
heart kept going; suspended by strings
Laressa Dickey's artistic work lands in the fields of writing, movement/performance, and bodywork. She has published four books of poems including Bottomland, Roam, Twang, and Syncopations, as well as several chapbooks including A Piece of Information About His Invisibility. Together with sound artist Andrea Steves, Dickey published RADIO GRAVEYARD ORBIT (Sming Sming), a speculative artist's book about space junk. Her collaborative installation with Ali Gharavi, How to Pass Time with No Reference, was included in the Bergen Assembly 2019. Along with Magdalena Freudenschuss, she was commissioned by Bergen Assembly to create a series of feminist essays on the politics of care, entitled: Re:assembling Emotional Labor: On the Politics of Care. Dickey is at work on a new collection of texts and performance images, titled THE LUNATIC SPEAKS TO US DIRECTLY, which takes titles from Cy Twombly works as a base of departure.