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Interactionality

Usually poetic conversations between authors and texts.

Spring Cleaning In The Winter Heat Snap

1/20/2017

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Kim Hyesoon's Sorrowpaste Mirrorcream (translated by Don Mee Choi) has been sitting on on a chair in my room since December, daring me to read it again, convinced that it had something different to tell me this time.  After all, if it didn't have anything to say, wouldn't it have found its way back to the bookshelf?

So I'm rereading it, and barely got three poems in when I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to write, and then five words in, it said "Surprise fucker, here's another poem entirely, write until it's finished!

So, here it is. Fresh. Unedited. I'm going to back in and see if this book is trying to tell me anything else.

What's Right, What's Left

I am sweeping the crumbs of you off my bed
I am sweeping the empty like a birthday party magician

I am sweeping the piles of skin to the floor

Fertilizing the carpet

which will grow dozens of versions of you every spring

None of them quite as you

but all of them the same fragile


I am claiming the center of the bed
                          neutral territory

         sweeping the empty of me into the stitch ridges


I am not taking sides in the shadowing of blame


I am mining the dresser for the last silt of you

See how we are not entirely the bed

though that's where it always starts


I am opening the window to diffuse the smell of you

I am opening the window to remember there is always outside

I am opening the window to call in birds

to pick your skin out of the carpet

but the birds are afraid of my inside


I am emptying the refrigerator of all the food you like

even if I bought it for myself

I don't ever again want to taste a thing that brought you joy


I am overreacting


I am regretting the lemon meringue in the trash

I am thirsty for the apple juice

I think you only drank apple juice because I bought it anyway

Why am I letting you vinegar my apple juice?


I am checking the drawers for what's missing

I don't remember precisely what was mine and what was yours

I don't remember precisely which us I am trying to forget

I don't know if that means I am successful in the forgetting

There is a beanstalk in my bedroom

There is a beanstalk that can not possibly have grown from your skin cells

There is a beanstalk that some errant bird must have planted

while I was busy in the kitchen


There can not possibly be a beanstalk in my bedroom

because this is an apartment

                            in a city

                            in the twenty-first century

and I am lactose intolerant and devoid of cows and magic


I go to sleep


I wake up to bats and am not dreaming

I wake up to bats circling a beanstalk and am not dreaming

I am covering my head under bankets

no bats no bats no bats

no beanstalk

bats no beanstalk

no batstalk
​no stalking bats


There is a cyclone of bats in my doorway

The only escape is up the beanstalk


Why should I escape?

Why should I follow some mystery out of my home?

Why shouldn't I just live on this bed until morning

                                              until the bats retreat out the window

                                              until this bed is mine
​                                                        I say mine again


Morning sneaks in through the window while I am
                                   searching for the thinning veil of bats

Morning sneaks in through the window like he is you

Morning sneaks in through the window and I pretend I haven't been waiting for him

Morning sneaks in through the window but halts at the beanstalk

Morning hates fairy tails

Morning likes literal

Morning likes just say what you want

Morning rolls its clouds at the very idea of beanstalks

Morning shoos the last bat to the attic of a neighbor's house

Morning sees me eyeing him

                 shrugs 
                 
boulders next to me on the bed
                                  No more reason to sneak

Morning knows it is caught

Morning doesn't care
Morning knows we are both different every time we see each other

Morning doesn't care

Morning withers the beanstalk to husked leaves that fertilize the carpet

Morning doesn't know what to call you either

but its being there sometimes is enough
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Beep Press The Button

12/3/2016

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Once I'd finished buying a majority of the books people recommended either for this project or just, in general, to read, I looked for obvious holes on my bookshelf. Was I lacking in Queer Writers? Writers from a particular continent? Translations? Form poets? 

I discovered there weren't enough poets of Asian descent, so I googled until I came across this Lithub article that was published shortly after a white poet, whose name doesn't deserve to be linked to or read, was published under an Asian pen name that he adopted. I ordered as many of the books as I could afford from online, and wandered the local bookstores, hoping to find some of their work there.

My favorite-so-far recommendations from the article, is the combination of Don Mee Choi's The Morning News Is Exciting, and Don Mee Choi's translation of Kim Hyesoon's Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream, selected  by Christine Shan Shan Hou.

I enjoy how she breaks out of traditional narrative with phrases or images that repeat for a while but not long enough to be mantric.  

My Mother Thinks I Don't Listen, My Father Thinks I Can't

The doctor points at the little race car
carousel horsing up and down as the dot 
matrix paper spools itself from a table
stack to results on the floor

I press a button like a contestant on the world's
most boring game show 
Can Adam Hear? Beep 
Press the button Beep a little
higher Press the button Beep higher
still Press the 
button Silence 
Wonder if i should be
pressing the button 

The car drifts up? Left? 

I am a car 
Beep I drift like melody 
Waver and beep and Watch the road
ahead The snowy white future of unplowed
sound Then blank canvass of 
excuses Beep I am possible hearing
aids Definite 
braces Beep Press 
the button Is any part of me
working properly? The car
drifts My mother
winces My father is talking on 
the other side of the glass Beep
Press the button Stuffed garfield
lying
prone next to the stack of Beep
Press the button Smiling
technician Beep Drifting What does this
mean? This long silence between beeping
My garfield wears a sweatband
My so 80s garfield like a stuffed cat
in an olivia newton-john video Stuffed
cat from the newspaper
famous for fat and lasagne This version
marketed thin with aerobic
outfits Probably likes mondays
​I am too fat Beep Press
the button I can't silence 
right Can't smile pleasantly 
Press the button Maybe 
there was a beep there I'm no good at video games This stupid 
car ups and downs and
Beep I think 
Technician grimaces I should
stop looking Shut my Beep
Press the button Maybe
i hear better in the dark
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    Interactionality

    An ongoing conversation between writers and the text that they're reading.

    Adam Stone is reading multiple collections of poetry each week, and producing a piece of writing or a series of prompts inspired by the text. It might be a poem in the voice of the author. It might be a memory involving the person who suggested the book to him. He might steal the title of a poem and use it to create a collage about his oh-so-inspiring childhood.

    To help keep him accountable, he's asked other writers that he both likes and likes working with to join him in writing their own interaction or two. With their permission, some of their interactions will also be posted here, clearly tagged with their names.

    There might even be interaction between Adam's interactions and an interaction written by someone else. The only rules of this project is to read more poetry and create more art.

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  • Tips From The Bar
  • Honest Conversation Is Overrated
  • Interactionality
  • Popcorn Culture
  • Comically Obsessed