Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Ongoing notes: dusie kollektiv 9: Dana Teen Lomax + Juliet Cook



San Quentin CA: Dana Teen Lomax’ THE-IN-BETWEEN opens with a curious quote by Marthe Reed: “To reencounter / the inbetween, / we must learn / not only to resee / but also to / rearticulate that / which is seen, / more complexly, / anew.” I mention curious, because the formatting sets up Lomax’ short chapbook exploration/homage of columns, seventeen pages of sentence-breaths without break, each set as a singular band, and each focusing on a different element of what she wishes to explore or articulate as an example of “the in-between.” As the first poem reads:

the-in-between-o
f-my-foot-and-wh
en-it-hits-the-gro
ound-touches-the-
earth-kisses-it-if-
i-am-being-poeti
c-or-particularly-
cheery-the-effect
-of-the-weight-w
here-i-am-heade
d-and-why-plus-
how-much-energ
y-i-take-to-get-th
ere-and-not-fore
going-the-why,-o
f-course,-and-th
e-towhee-song-t
hat-i-do-not-reco
gnize-busy-as-i-
constantly-am-wi
th-human-concer
ns-along-on-the-
way…-all-this-fro
m-the-Sundarba
ns’-increasingly-
vital-perspective-

OH: Poet and publisher Juliet Cook’s contribution is DARK PURPLE INTERSECTIONS (inside my Black Doll Head Irises) (Blood Pudding Press, 2019), a suite of short poems that move through the meditations and examinations of lyric memoir. The poems in DARK PURPLE INTERSECTIONS seek to explore and understand gestures, decisions and a sense of balance, including prior relationships, stroke recovery, ageing and depression, and the construction of dolls. “I’m tired of being a last resort,” she writes, in the poem “We haven’t talked in years, but suddenly he wants me again,” continuing: “a suicide hot line inside a middle-aged woman’s body, / stuck on repeat.”

He was tired of hearing about my stroke and my poetry.

From whiplash on the back of the bed stand
to nipple piercings in a biohazard bag.

Dismembered brain
waves
like a broken doll hand.



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