dear Other, with pink dish

(Flo Reynolds & Cat Woodward)

in the interest of distance let me describe you: the frame of two
seats, the little peg to hang a coat here, & here. the way the seat
cuts into space & fields intrude through the eye which casts the
light by which it sees. by this token a parable. agon arrives at last
introducing to this frame an ear where 2 flowers in a jar querulous
& orange. in the interest of distance (where i live) let me describe
to you a rising cannon that burgeons like water. how boastful 
architectures of elsewhere render the film within the film: power
tools to a living forehead & here in my distance drill bits cut 
to precious briolettes. let me say to you ‘gondwanaland’ through 
the moving shapes, let me say sweet gem ‘where did you go?’ &
‘where have all the girls gone?’ & ‘where have all the not-girls gone?’
i have looked all over in this picture place which has an echo, a floor
plan with two eyes open (cringe). happy accident is cosy in
between: window, door, idea of door, surprise! too big to see its edges, 
& holding several years. this gallery space a sunken grey radiator 
full of colony, this the distance i am goingthrough. & into this space
letting. let now. and let. let my coat from the peg there. let hold
the arm i wear. let slow. let speak too loudly so all consents my
coat in the corner slip on before leaving to go now, so letting go
quiet and my permission to go quiet and look at it. fleshly too much
i asking quietly. a frame is 5×9 and give. 

                                                                                  remind me at this vertex
my body is circumstance & its environs. so let the frame i wear turn
& consider a girlform (headless armless legless torso, smooth
terracotta with bosom) & a not-girlform (helmet the curve
of willowleaf, plumes). let hold the air & here space i enclose &
perambulate, hearing blooms as i am considered by a resonant
dish in baby pink or a deliberate bronze liver. to the left a gentleman
nude and above an elaborate golden mechanical bird. the hot verb
is take what’s handed & put it on. with such pickles are winters
weathered, guiltily witchcraft, all things cold & hard & here.
compose me again of distance & imagine, munching radish, many 
layers of transparency in this plexiglass land of looking, then ploosk!
into my nonperson suit i go, imago of objectivity verbed upon.
the pink dish looks inside her. the pink dish inside her looks.
the hot verb is not be but borrow. the borrowing is not other but
nearness.

                           i have a gap to close, harrying and hieing as she knits
a long scarf for her small brother busy being not the only one.
junk without me, oh eyes on a stick! unwilling exhibit, get me hence,
where ever you are. knock knock oh sweet curator in the next fold,
galaxy of cheesegrater perforations all around. cryptic graffito
attributes my thoughts to my twin elsewhere (she’s an architect, upcycles
asbestos shells). anemones & a toy bridge over a pond, dungarees.
holding my pink dish, an act that asserts i’m all animal, clay.
what a long walk on a short day, my twin thinks making space
of kitchen utensils. i cross here in the nettles my twin is a peg
& a flower in a jar. o hum with her voice of repelling
magnets, clutching to my chest our blue period.

hello stranger

(Flo Reynolds)

begin false glasses + moustache

over the glasses + moustache

a nose to hide in

now

peel the lepidoptera from the brow

be un/sur/passable

there grow

wormcasts in the handkerchief

snail trail in the gusset

+ you say hello stranger

slender monster

tender blending one who

bristles

on the chins of hedge

gals

+ feather eyelashes

upon the lids of mistle

bois

skirts swish skirts swish

polypore velour

queer as trees

+ the self seen through the pores

queer as trees are trees

friendly rhizomes feed you

all the winter through

pretty in the phloem

be unashamed

+ as the bone

unbars the gullet

tell

with greening word

how will you love in the forest

stranger of clay and cloth?

Go out and pick wildflowers for ART

(Cat Woodward)

a poem

makes her denser

more inscrutable

a pebble full of lightning

a pebble in bladder-brown mud

               but you already knew that

would looks of pity not

disintegrate a bridge?

lucky bridge

arriving at a ripe amaze

like that

ta-ta, tulle shards of soul dust

with small noisome nerves

like shrews

I mean,

the view from your brink

is dazzling

what healing is, anyway

I need to know,

when the pebble splits

will the poem leak out

or in?