Poetry

Three fragments from the Symposium

This (forgetful) body. This (dreaming) body. This proud flesh will not acknowledge its fault lines, does not comprehend how to be something/anything other than whole. The hole shot through, the Klein-bottle manner of beingintheworld where every surface is open & porous, every surface is bare & soft and exposed to the blind sun & spring rain and eyes, everywhere eyes open & porous. These (other) bodies.

*

If the last man on earth sat in his house, and there came a knock upon the door, how could this be? It’s a language problem. Whereof I cannot speak. And the most frustrating thing, that the space left between us is a lexical gap and I could not tell you even if I tried, even if I wanted to. Whereof I cannot speak (I might live). A human being in the manner of a calque, taking the problem and atomising, recombining. Wondering what it means to write love notes to a body I never had.

*

Whilst still walking, talking. In the midst of life. I became a memorial of myself that on occasion would flicker like a distant star, the occlusion a reminder of another body in the blackness. A break in the delicate conductive filigree of the anatomy, reduced to the smallest figments, carefully labelled cuneiform, clavicle, ischium. The wire clots wound throughout the veins, the thermoplastic pillars of the capillaries an unfitting monument. Teaching nothing, knowing nothing, nothing.

Alex Marsh