NIVRETTA THATRA

Soothesayer Texts

In case you’re wondering
about the source of the odor,
it’s just the rug

You are not, as you suspect,
being taken over by yourself
and there is no Annihilation
starring Natalie Portman
proliferating in your chest

Tell that to the azaleas down the
street, shaking with the force of the
bees inside them

A thousand ways to feel alone, or,
    a thousand names for god

1.  I feel that art is a serious business,
     which others do not respect with their
     drugs and proclivities to flirtation, their
     proclivity to become distracted from the
     skill itself
2.  I’m a scientist and father claims there are
     things that science can never touch
3.  I’m a nondualist and a first date doubts
     the validity of mysticism and nonmaterial
     explanations
4.  People pair up on the dance floor, I never
     do. (Except once in Chile.)
5.  At an exhibit of an octophonic sound system
     I looked away from an ex-friend’s friend
6.  On the dance floor two girls befriended me.
     I told them 'you two are rlly cute
     together'. they laughed, 'oh we're not
     dating!' and I felt the looming aloneness
     of knowing a beautiful feeling that they
     are yet to bodily encounter. They are
     young. They haven't named the romance of
     friendship, haven't committed themselves to
     a partnership which is not better or more
     secure than romantic romance, but is
     a partnership nonetheless.
7.  I’m not angry with my ex anymore but none
     of my friends would support me in inviting
     this person back into my life. I’m not sure
     I would support myself
8.  My friend works in prison justice and she
     won’t tell me the depths of what she knows
9.  My friend wrote her thesis on
     ecological/ethical coffee farming and she
     won’t tell me the depths of what she knows
10. My friend is in a clinical informatics
     Master’s program and she won’t tell me the
     depths of what she knows
11.  

You don’t need to feel
alone when you hear
the thousand names of god

Tell that to the one thousand and
one-th name

Neither are you the epicenter
of a great bulldozer

nor waterfall

Untitled

On my run yesterday I saw pine needles caught in a palm-sized inverted parachute, the parachute itself caught between two twigs low to the ground. Closer, and the parachute was made of a fine material, draping and pierced with holes. Closer, and the parachute disappeared, so thin were the strands from which it was woven. Closer, and I spotted the parachuter: a spider clinging to the apex of the inverted parachute, which was a parachute no longer, but a fallen web. I ran off, got caught in a spin of fear and longing and yearning, stared blindly down at the passing snapshots of needles-roots-moss. I could have been running on a treadmill, on a photo-realistic trail painted onto a rubber reel—it made no difference to me. At some point, in one of those startling splits of waking during an activity already underway, I looked up, remembering that there was an entire direction I was ignoring, having only been focused on down and forward. I looked up and there were parachutes and parachutes and parachutes draped in the trees. They hadn't fallen at all, I realized. They were built right where they were, intended to be concave just like Charlotte had intended hers to be perpendicular to the ground. There are lots of ways to spiderweb, and I spend a whole lot of time convinced there's only one.

Don't stop until you convince yourself of goodness

Squeezing some citrus till you can see the whites
the plastic squeezing tool is orange and swirled
Taught -- don't stop squeezing until the last drop
is out. Bitterness? Expected! Keep squeezing. Like
tamping down espresso grinds, a morning move, squ
eezing citrus is a way to concretize thoughts inside.
What is the white part of your eye called? Sclera.
Of citrus fruit called? Albedo. And the sky? Sky
above flashing like bleached wood, washed clean

Nivretta Thatra hides inside thatniv.com