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Late summer elbows itself into fall
through my walking routes
where it looks like moist ground,
and trees,
and trees,
and I walk as the labor
of inventing the doing of stuff
for no purpose
whatsoever.


I’m stitched together,
composed of unpaid bills,
and this city
is private.


I knew her for her walks on unpaved surfaces,
foot on soil,
and for the fact that she couldn’t balance
the stiffness of concrete.
This is just one thing
among others that makes the city unbearable.


My mother’s father’s mother’s sister,
foot on soil,
was not the one
who sent us chocolate from Germany
when rent was overdue
in this somewhere else
I’m calling Iris


After the rain,
everyone would walk
our mushrooms routes
with woven weeping willow baskets.
I guess
I’m going now
for the purpose of not leaving,
which is more a conversation
and less than a house.


I’m stealing a line from a poet
while I think about the coming together
“I always thought of a soul as a giant communion” she says1
I always thought of memory as a giant becoming of a body.


I’m calling Iris,
who breaks down matter
running errands
She opens her body up,
she is missing one arm and one head.
The string that holds the earth,
my line of communication,
all beneath the body.
Like God is some mold,
an erotic ruin
but maybe it’s just me,
I just love too much against interpretation.


This neighborhood opens the body up to the sea
the earth cuts through the waves,
you could have been a mountain
If you asked me to describe these rocks,
I probably couldn’t
You could have been a mountain
now closer to
the apartment,
where you were talking in the kitchen,
smoking cigarettes and cutting wood,
where we were sinking fast and slow,
a skinny leg holding up the arch.
The floor is eaten, gone
I didn’t know that anything could grow like this in concrete.
An army leaves this neighborhood
in between a breath.
I find it hard to talk to you
We can’t pay rent with chocolate.
You’re older than me


You were born in a country that no longer exists,
and I recently turned a hundred.
I have travelled West of our desire.
Meanwhile I’m forgetting my mother tongue,
and today I’m quitting my no-contract job
for another corner of thicker skin,
zero-hour contract,
I think I’ll leave this corner too.
I’ve been cooking for money,
cleaning private property,
and now this,
I’m carrying food and wine and water
and coffee and tea and cake
and just whatever I’m asked to carry.
To call this
rent, on time, for this room in this house, I’m trying
and now is night,
and I’m telling you
that I came here
with an injured sense of socialist imagination.
As if
we’re a community of rooted matter.
I’m stuck in this body and my utopia is
to let this rage collapse
into
the love of voluntarily
not to leave
or leaving because I want to
directed towards the you
who neither exercises force nor submits to it,
and I’ve got the time,
it’s fragile and good.
It costs me
a lot of money to acquire a language for this.
I need a third name for the corner of this constellation now
of what accounts for the path around it,
like in other tongue,
like in everything that we cannot enquire further.
I can afford Spring but what comes after is uncertain.
What could I have said?
The world splits me open on the spectrum of silence and song
Here I will live for years
Under my armpit
I will carry a short note soaked in salt
indicating my direction.


That I don’t know the origin of the corner
where your body is positioned with the back turned towards the room
and vision towards the ninety degrees of the two walls meeting
in some form of a culture of consequence
expressed in the immobility
where I waste my time,
where it flows the speed of boredom,
and me who is supposed to think about my actions.
It’s not the same as inventing doing nothing,
like when Iris asks me for
something simple and beautiful
that makes her cry.
Meanwhile,
it’s not a question of wherefrom,
but a question of how from
…here ->
<-(there)->
-else(…)where-
around <-> here (…)->
a question of subtle attention
Ever since
I’ve been holding the attention of repair,
repairing this body
on my couch
holding the question
and now I’ve lost the count
of how many times I was lying.


Ever since my body was made of clay back then in biblical times,
I’ve been working out the relationship between my debt and my labor.
If you throw me into the river
I will float with a hollow back,
since I’ve been making ‘stuff’
such as dreaming language
instead of making money out of time


A river crosses my tongues
separating neighborhoods
but we eat the same.


Meanwhile I remember how
Ulysses returns from his odyssey and
his dog recognizes him
as the only character capable of doing so.


I’m so close to be talking about the sea, but
occasionally I’m digging some holes
in the ground
where I can plant myself for a little while,
but something is giving me away,
like the memory of a dog.
I recognize you and you and you
more like a face
rather than a country.
I’ll bring all of you home for dinner
so, I can ask
who invented Eastern Europe?


I’m calling Iris.
Your body
outside of itself.


We’re constantly making documents
depending on where we go.
There is not much juice in that,
but I’ve got a new name,
and I’m speaking English all the time.








1 “Soule Sermon” by Bernadette Mayer, Work & Days 2016