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Carrie Lorig

"The disappearance of women should be interpreted not only as giving up the fight
against the violence of the world but also as a clear rejection. There is an expression in
Italian whose double meaning is untranslatable: 'Io non ci sto.' Literally it means: I'm
not here, in this place, before what you're suggesting." –Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia

"My writing / as useless or as useless / as thought / as a headdress / a sharp engulfment
                            collapsing into a stream / the doors open to the rain."

Being Stone,

What bursts forth is interference
What burst forth is a festival of betrayal.

Being Stone,

I make it tell the body profit.

Collection / Agency

I did not come to poetry in order

to talk / I came

to speak /

to accept the labor of speaking                                     April 6, 2018
                         The Intensity of the Reader: Writing as a Wound /
a Guest a Thief / in the Wound / in the Wreckage
"Feminization of the problem of lived time." –Myung Mi Kim

           I have a new habit when I talk / not when I speak / I have a new habit of asking
for verification / an intensity of verification / I ask for reassurance that what's taken
place was real / is real

That I did not imagine / it. Worse, that I imagined something happened / totally void of
the pleasure of imagining.

*

           What is it to imagine / when there has been an attempt / to take the possibility of
dreaming from you / from other bodies

To imagine something happened / totally void of the pleasure of imagining / is to realize
the potential for / a festival of betrayal / blooming from within

To feel the possibility of dreaming leave you /

*

           Did it happen             the dark / like you / is covered in flowers / the dark did
record it / as that. I leave work to go somewhere else / I leave work where my body is
told to hold it and hold it and hold it /

I leave work as the girl possessed and eating an orange / I leave work in June / having
spent two years working

/ for a body that won't be accountable / won't apologize / or acknowledge his life isn't
worth more than others /

He excuses himself / uncontrollably.

I have a new habit when I think / of reminding myself that he won't be accountable /
won't apologize / or acknowledge his life isn't worth more than others /
*

           The cure is not magical / A form of research and a threat / It changes the poem
for me / citation / narrative / a physical means for me I'll write a hymn
again. (I'll write a hymn again.)

*

           I have other evidence but I refuse to enter it here / I did not come here to talk / I
came here to speak / as the undying /                  I came here to sing / I have no
singing

voice but am singing very particular phrases / while I'm writing I came here / to speak
as the dead / I often have singing / sung thoughts that can only occur / as the undying.

"I am talking to others who haven't been listened to. And I am finding this form does not
account for our conversation.


The personal essay requires a set of coping behaviors that ultimately impose their
dysfunction on the form. Last month I tried to write a lyric essay on abortion and ended
up with a collection of vignettes in which women give each other fruit."

I tried to write a poem and ended up giving each other fruit A Poem: I tried to write
a poem and ended up giving each other fruit

*

           I came here to speak to others / to create space to create a density of failure / to
create space or a density of failure with or alongside others who haven't been listened to
/ the undying the unquotable the Unstoppable Watch / I can't be trusted / I am finding
this form / does not account for our conversation the Unspeakable Watch I came here to
accept the labor of speaking / of listening to the dead / to accept the labor of giving each
other fruit / the only quote there is / is the one that grows

———————————
1 I asked for a letter of recommendation out of panic / a frantic need I felt to try / to protect or hide myself. I did not want him to
have any exact measurement for how much I hated him, how much I feared him / the doors closed / to the rain. Revealing that to
him in any way felt like / giving him something like my life / It comes and goes / it comes and goes

Narrative: I make it tell the body profit*

******
*What bursts forth is interference
What burst forth is a festival of betrayal
**************

*I DID
NOT COME TO POETRY IN ORDER
**********************
AND I DID NOT

**
*FUCKING

****************************************
DISAPPEAR

Collection / Agency

-What does it mean to repeat myself? The first page of this poem contains quotes from my first book, The Pulp vs. The Throne (Artifice Books).

-Thank you again Ella Longpre, especially, for writing the quotes used in this poem. Thank you. The quotes that appear are from the essay, "The Event Vanishes," which was published at Fanzine on November 22,2016.

-I listened to the song, "In The Morning I'll Be Better," by Tennis.

-"Art is Medicine: Helen Molesworth on the Work of Simone Leigh" was published by ArtForum and written by Helen Molesworth.

-There are quotes from a public FB post he made, from a cease and desist letter he sent that was posted online, and Cassandra Troyan said "There's nothing more feminist…" on her FB wall.

-There are excerpts from the LOR he wrote that I opened and then burned.

-Thank you Wendy C. Ortiz for allowing me to take a screenshot of your Instagram story, which features a quote from Elena Ferrante's Frantumaglia.

Carrie Lorig is the author of The Pulp vs. The Throne (Artifice Books, 2015). Chapbooks include The Blood Barn (Forthcoming 2019, Inside the Castle), The Book of Repulsive Women (Essay Press), Reading as Wildflower Activist, and NODS (Magic Helicopter Press). She lives in ATL.