The Economy
I didn’t love
That I had this
Tendency
Toward melody
Or the appetite for drama
Always obvious
In my thinking
& in everything
I did. I wasn’t TV
Though I watched myself
Sometimes passively
As though brained or
Bludgeoned out of the fullness
Of my own reality. I felt
I had to respect what seduced me
Even if stupidly—even when it made
Me stupid—or meant I was—
Making of my mind a begging bowl
Laying myself waste for the devil
Making an innocent victim of the child within
So ferociously did I fear
Something adult, like sovereignty
Survival was a big-
Box-store-bought
Blanket. Not wet
But scented
With the antiseptics
Of the factory
It would take days
To air out, get it to resemble
The picture of something homey
And grandmother-made
I know what it’s like to pay
Money for such.
The three-dimensional
Image of things. To find
Them feeling hollow and smelling
Wrong. I know what it’s like.
The imitation of life.
I almost know what it means.
I disciplined my own form and the thinking
Within me. That may not be a religion
But it is grim theology.
The more muscle I had the better
I felt I could contain and conduct
The sorrow within. The smoother
Ran my blood and lymph.
My body dismayed me and I hated,
Adored it. Recurrent dreams
Of defective dolls kept coming back
To warn me. You are not a thing.
You are not the object against which forces
Tilt that you cannot control.
You are the entire subject of the world.
Tears rolled down a cheek of stone
My friend Terry writes about water
And land, mother and brother
Like a singer. I once despaired
To her that the only endangered
Species I had managed to speak
On behalf of up to that moment
Was myself. This seemed squalid
And narrow to me. Terry said it was real
Territory. I blinked melancholy
Into the seething night
Like a spotted owl in the eye
Of a security camera
Black and white bird without
Offspring or prey. My body
Is filled with plastic
I left my mother to die
To write these lines
You will parry that such is a false
Economy. But so
Are all the other ones we live by
Ariana Reines
❤️
“I have just realized that the stakes are myself
I have no other
ransom money, nothing to break or barter but my life
my spirit measured out, in bits, spread over
the roulette table, I recoup what I can
nothing else to shove under the nose of the maitre de jeu
nothing to thrust out the window, no white flag
this flesh all I have to offer, to make the play with
this immediate head, what it comes up with, my move
as we slither over this go board, stepping always
(we hope) between the lines”
