The Poetry Project

dear bonks

Bianca Rae Messinger

[dateless]

XXX
dear bonks,

XXX
this must be you. you see yourself in everything these days. not that it's a good or a bad thing exactly more a moment. or an issue with moment. when i see what i want to see of you – in your window – still then in that there but the unhinging inability to see where "that" leads to, in an eventual falling over – being ok with that, and then putting more of that into it, i.e. the production.

XXX
so were all in it unhinging, then that's – the moment of its happening over its eventual. like when the electricity is turned up and you just have to sit there. but maybe that's a retreat? rosie has been very sweet with me. cuddling me while i lie on the couch, while we fiddle on the workbench together. to date i have made one sink (out of an old pot and some wood) a new bookcase, and a new shelf. the wind is back.

she's fed again, me, that she. you can’t call that choice it's not like putting up sails – then you'll go to see it, this eventual evening. a you from somewhere. hear between it then around sometimes and us two or the three of us (if there could be a three of us) sit down to write a letter. you forget you can't see that time before you and a clicking in the background and that eventual hushing or a whoosh and that was the room, the corner to look towards – meaning sublimation? see you soon i hope – in the corner with her eyes closed this part could be seen otherwise. or i mean on the notes side of things she's there and while she gives a command you wait not sulking but remembering all those moments – as they could be that forever /

XXX
until,

XXX
b
XXX

2/20

XXX
dear espírito santo,

XXX
in the dream we have two kids, a boy and a girl. sorry it has taken me so long to write you since your last letter. it was four pages long and pink. anyways the kids are really adorable, i think you would have liked them. the girl, i didn’t have time to name them, let’s call her girl prime, or just prime. prime goes to make us passports because we don’t have any – how funny that i was in Chicago that weekend as if i would ever leave. then prime says, "i know how to laminate things" because she's ten years old. so she goes to the copy store and makes our passports. when we get them they are obviously inadmissible at any border crossing, if you could cross any border crossing. the Brazil passport she made for you was especially cute, magic marker on green construction paper making the outline of the country, and little stars in a quasi crux australis – that she had seen over Rio when we went in November. then she laminated it and folded it and handed it to you. she was really cute and kind of had your hair like in those videos you sent me from when you were small.

at some point the dream ends because i wake up – we were on our way to Istanbul. rose is now giving herself a bath, she's making me look bad. but i do want to take a bath – it's just an awful amount of effort. somehow writing a letter to you feels like less. maybe because i like you. there was the attempt to make this letter flirty in some way – is me describing my desire for a bath a flirtation? the weird thing about all this is i’ve felt remarkably better about my body – maybe because i have more time alone with it. but as you know that doesn’t always work out. as "remarkably better" as any girl in my situation could feel. there are books coming in the mail from Germany and i have to clean each one as they come in, then i’ll send u one in the next letter.

XXX
a bientôt,

XXX
xx

XXX
bianc
XXX

3/23

XXX
bianca,

XXX
thinking about children (i really miss the kids i worked with—Finn, Mac, Noah, Brooklyn, Elenor ugh all of them—even ones from years ago—barrett), that my body can actually make them and keep them in there. and there’s one in me right now growing and i never thought i would be able to say that. it would have eyes and hair and thoughts, but it is not going to exist. and i did get kind of sad the other day that it won’t ever be a person/ not sad enough to stay pregnant. a guy asked if Nancy was chihuahua and then if she was pregnant, i think because he wanted the puppies, but i thought it was such a sweet compliment, assuming Nancy is a little pregnant girl. you have not been in my dreams, that i can remember—that’s probably because i’m not mad at you and i’ve been mad in my dreams.

XXX
missed seeing your giant copper eyes even if it’s just facetime.

XXX
Love Is Blind makes love look as ridiculous as it really is. you know how love becomes a reason to get up in the morning, make your bed and stay in bed and then it becomes a reason for control, the reason for…i’ve been thinking about pain and love, physical pain and emotional pain where they cross and how maybe everything comes back to pain. my physical pain tolerance is high i guess i know that from surgery—yours is too. surg surge ;) soon.

XXX
love u

XXX
kylie

ps. this is a good resource if ever little nan were to become pregnant: wikihow.com/Care-for-a-Pregnant-Chihuahua
XXX

4/24

XXX
Dear State of the Holy Spirit,

XXX
Thank you for your letter. I miss you. I’m writing with caps now. The mail from Germany came. Great timing huh. i wish love made me make my bed. This time the dreams were more ominous, which makes sense, it's been a few days. i can't take out money, then my dad is there. Then we turn into bats, you and me i think. But the bats were the good part.

XXX
Shiv shared his movie drive with me the other day and so i started watching Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia last night. In what is more or less second scene, after some time at church, the main character Andrei Gorchakov says that poetry is untranslatable, like all art. That she, Eugenia, should throw away the book. I thought if I were to if i were to draw it, it would look like this:

I thought the X’s were moments of interception between worlds (“the poetic moment”) and the text balloon speaks for itself. The arrow is a translation. Eugenia tries to go along with him but seems to disagree. She then asks how they should proceed in order to reach some understanding – how could they learn about each other – he says by abolishing the boundaries between states. Only the translation of the Italian leaves us in an ambiguity as to whether these are nations or, y’know other states.

still from Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983)

In any case i think he might be right – things like when you actually stop sleeping – or when the dog comes to lick your face, finding the exact moment of interception might not really be it. Or maybe the issue is that there is no difference between the X’s and the text balloons – like how Nathaniel Mackey writes to the Angel of Dust in Bass Cathedral, that the balloons became their own sort of attraction. One that detracts from the performance itself. That there is an awful lot of pointing going on.


I think my main problem was watching things whose main premise is work – without seeing or exacting some closeness to who’s around. That’s what seemed important in any case. I’m glad that’s over.

Whether or not we got somewhere seemed to be antithetical to what it was we were doing. Even Grey’s Anatomy, which I’m stuck on, does this when you think about it.

XXX
XXX
But I’ve gotten a little carried away. What starts mattering is that we girls really do like each other. We move in intervals, between states or bedrooms, where it’s fall in Italy.

Maybe that’s just what we do. We find ourselves in situations – in scenes that become other scenes – or when there are no borders between states (nations), or rooms, where everything becomes something else. I’m waiting for that day.

XXX
Until soon I hope,

XXX
Love you,

B

House Party #2

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