Valerie Hsiung, outside voices, please

 

Project Relevance. The moment. We, the people, designated, shall be using baby wipes on the conditional statue. We, the people, designed, shall henceforth be busy using baby wipes instead of makeup wipes, and then we’ll be using meltable stitches for fornication wounds instead of baby wipes. Project Prevalence. The monument. Line was bad. What we come out from that port-o-potty. Line was bad. Equally. Technically, mobile a misnomer. Well… they’re… “the. techno. crats.” behind that. And… they’re about to undergo some sort of orthodontic revision, but should be back to their desks by no later than, say, Monday? No. you don’t get book. You. Don’t. Get. Book. She mentioned the island of Reunion. Their postures, proxemics. Carrier to carrier. The way they were fucked to her. And then, how when she crosses the line into neutral territory, everything all but changed. Allegedly, the governor.

Why shouldn’t the sympathizers be in need of our organizational realizations?

                                                            This is the topiary. (“TEST”)

I’m currently (and finally, as I am clearly behind) going through Colorado poet and interdisciplinary artist Valerie Hsiung’s recent collection outside voices, please (Cleveland OH: CSU Poetry Center, 2021), winner of the 2020 Open Book Poetry Competition, as selected by Nicholas Gulig, Dora Malech and Sheila McMullin. The author of multiple poetry and hybrid writing collections, including the forthcoming The Naif (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2024) and The only name we can call it now is not its only name (Counterpath, 2023), as well as e f g (Action Books), YOU & ME FOREVER (Action Books), Name Date of Birth Emergency Contact (The Gleaners) and To love an artist (Essay Press, 2022), selected by Renee Gladman for the 2021 Essay Press Book Prize, Hsiung’s outside voices, please exists as a kind of polyphonic lyric quilt, offering shifts in syntax that occasionally stagger or stumble, composed as stand-alone text blocks that run in sequence. The montage of lyric is expansive, writing speech that should be spoken, offering song and solace, declaration and document on trauma, abuse and colonization, offering takes on religion, politics, fear and fossil fuels. Seeking a way through which to survive, Hsiung writes deep into the dark through a language of pure meaning, articulating an erasure against erasure, a commentary against what otherwise could never be said.

Here is a book for you to read, pernicious reader

 

Here is also the bed we just made

 

Is there something I can help you wish today, madame?

 

Here is a book labored over

 

An axe would do, an axe, water as well, water

 

If you take this book, you may think that you have laid with me

 

If you take this book, you may think you’ve seen through me

 

Destroyed me