SOPHIE LINDEN

DO YOU REALLY WANNA TOUCH IT?

 

 

                                                                                        the skin is our largest organ of assimilation and elimination

                                                                                                       The earth has all our medicine

 

                in museums visitors are beginning to graze

the marble, ketchup fingers toy with Capitoline wolves

 

                                                                                                                                  getting smooth as a rule in washed stone       

                                                       sight on scene:

                     yr gorilla glass buzzing , Romulus weaning at a nipple

                                                                    It’s necessary to implicate in order to ask certain questions

                                                                                                            (Leigh Ledare)

 

                                    for the Greco-Roman   New Nail Polish  I am flipping the page

center left balance                                   same inbox as outbox                              

                                                                                                                                                   You got that clay beast gaze

                                       I swipe my face in a red metal dog, and my face still screen tests the same

                                fucking like Rabbits

Imperial outburst                                     

                                                         what’s its property tonight?

 

                              Western e-waste                                                   my Out-     Stretched canvas

  

& in blood the minerals          skin trade of fragments                                                           

                                                                                pay per view and plow to plow down  my cotton torsets

 

                                                              of what we’ve promised ourselves in other lives

                                                                                                                                                like unclenched teeth

                                 a prize for every meal                                          

it was my pleasure, yr border

                                                                 a pause for what’s porous

 

                                                                                                                               hydraulic composure, exposure 

                                                                                                                                             (Lucy Lippard)

THE MOST HONEST WRITING BEING

 

it’s ability of invention
something that wasn’t true
until she said it,
a particular monster
without direct sense
of object, a texture of felt order,
while the thicker paint gave
more dumb sense to it.
To be flat out
lying where something else
was scattered and mounting,
un-orient control.
Other times I’d hear
the embodiment of your
false relational perception
its empty fucking,
precautions of zeros,
when what could be better
than to give up
sugar? Be idle, lack an explanation,
unwill our own creation.
One poster covers the other,
the outline all carved in.

To build an altar
to chisel out of what’s been broken,
for a time to speak
about roses, only then
what brings us our greatest
sense of panic?
I had considered vinegar,
mixed fruits with vegetables,
gave a second wash
to my own obliteration.
What was its container?

I was in another lyric
sung by poets who talked
about writing as its own
sense of erotic, so only
last night did I think
to fold in toppings,
split her three ways,
begin envying the nipple as the more
nature more nasty, I asked,
rather than attractive,
could one be too attracted?
As if we resembled today
standing behind the TV
reading aloud
some functional reality,
I let it smudge some landscape,
its red door near center
then another one
with someone always shouting louder
behind me,
it’s the speech that wasn’t mine,
inside, aside its referents.

Or I had let a dream
document tomorrow and tomorrow
blessed with this whole other
sense of object. Meaning I was subject
to track a school bell’s ringing
though with a language
of bigness came juggling
the horizontal and vertical planes
like capitalism and the adrenals,
like an extension of shelf-life,
it was a cancer we treated by degrees
of similar nature.
I forgot a page’s corners
for the discipline of next dead center,
I bought some girls a bar of chocolate,
I wanted to drag one in
to a nearby fountain, forget
all mouthing caution
subjectively objective
this too a type of confession:

To be free from tampons, large overhead compartments
I asked you to finish the cup and give the lady.

I was bodies becoming bodies
tearing skin from the same
piece of the project
 “bodies becom[ing]
something touching
which is touched,”
until we  were
with form before
without it. 

SHADOWBOX

 

 

Evening in increments 

outside my window.

 

Ahead winter’s a mountain

not able to see

the truck entering the road.

 

Possessive flat, long stems

bounded by Harold’s crayon. His snaky swipes bracket the skylight

of our new home.

 

Far from off  from far off

drones circle as surgical procedure.

Pivot tunes of being fenced in.

In America we are dancing its corner,

hanging palm print off the doors. 

 

My hands on your hips

 

sky beheads sky

 

pooling events

notes

“Bodies becoming bodies..” is quoted from Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology.

"Shadowbox" was inspired by a painting by Malcolm Hecht.

Sophie Linden's work has been published in The Volta, interrupture, Salt Hill, and elsewhere.