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There is a Devil inside me
There is a Flower inside me
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He got Love *******
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Blood and rags /***
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She filmed them****
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**************************************There is a Devil inside me
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She filmed them****
************burning
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in the snow********
with their arms up**

Corpse A

 
For you though they Took you they hurled you
               Out of space
Half strangled In yrLace You’d lip the world to madness
On yrFace Plunging grandly out See you sagging down
with bulging Hair to sip Plunging grandly out To fall on
yrRip yrGrip To fall on yrFace / yrBelly bulging Stately
               Into space

Corpse B

For you though they Took you B wrote me a letter asking me if I had any poems with the word corpse in Them they hurled you Out of space I thought to myself, Don’t I? Haven’t I seen / corpses Many horse corpses / when I wrked at the barn / Dead from Colic Half strangled In yrLace The delicacy of the horse The delicacy of the dying body is the corpse / but isn’t the corpse I keep thinking / of Hiromi Ito’s Wild Grass on the Riverbank when it goes, “Mother said, / ‘A growing, laughing, living body’ / Mother repeated, / ‘A growing, laughing, living body’” When I read this or heard this I was immediately struck by These Chiseled Moon by the thought that This is a corpse This is the inexplicable movement of a corpse Half strangled In yrLace You’d lip the world to madness On yrFace What is a fucking girl, Djuna, What is anger, Djuna, to a fucking girl in a girl’s corpse body How is anger a BLKSEED a BLKC a BLKSEIZE ripening glistening fluttering in the fire / tissue / script of the corpse’s spreadgirl body, Djuna, Plunging I bought your book made of construction paper Plunging grandly I bought The Book of Repulsive Women, Djuna, I felt it choose me Plunging grandly out To fall on The book that chose me and a Thunderstorm To fall on yrRip yrGrip To fall and I read the last poem in yr book / The BLKSEED some powder or color on my Fingers / The last poem in a BLKC of Women Dying Women in New York City They hurl They See you sagging down with bulging Hair to sip The last poem, “Suicide,” possesses a movement from Corpse A to Corpse B a movement which Sees you sagging down with bulging Hair to sip a movement which Chooses you / Sees you yrBelly bulging Stately Into space And I know that the corpse is rupture the corpse is rupture I am a corpse a corpse’s spreadgirl body a girl’s corpse body when on St. Patrick’s Day a group of white college men demand that N kiss me for them / that he take me home and fuck me for them / For you though they Took you because I am just an unrecognizable instance they hurled you Out of space Half strangled in yrLace A nightmare / grown suddenly real but only / to myself See you sagging down with bulging Hair to sip How lonely Driving myself On the way home The corpse The Rag and Bone felt until it went / into a Panic Attack How lonely It shredded itself into the BLKC You’d lip the world to madness on yrFace Plunging grandly out To fall on yrRip yrGrip To fall on yrFace C (who is currently in California) explains what it means to understand exactly what is happening / how that is the corpse’s powerful capability That rupture The deaths of those disappeared and murdered by the State / and the bodies of those still living / but forced into silence, or those who must bear the weight of testimony by the fact of being survivors yrFace / yrBelly bulging Stately Into space Or, when the poems were thrown overboard, the corpse could finally identify the senseless brutality all around it It was much worse than a nightmare, it was real In that moment the corpse sees how endless that realness is to become Through the corpse’s growing, laughing, living body the book never ends The book can only start again and again The Book of Repulsive Women The Song of Our Disappeared Love and that is only revealed in the rupture yrBelly bulging Stately Into space The immutable bulging The speakinggore that comes from beyond The Devil inside me The Flower inside me The spreadinggirl or the bit of contact filling me unwrapping my mouth with An Offering my mouth with A Horror

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Corpse A

A loved bad word And those who have
               their blooms in jars Over-hearts
left oozing Even vases in the making are uncouth Yet some wonderous thing within
the mess Was held in cheek / The site of decimation / We’ve worshipped you a little
more than Christ What turn of body What turn of body You pay her price and wonder
why you need her still And those who have
               their blooms in jars Over-hearts
left oozing What turn of body You pay her price and wonder why you need her Still /
She does not kneel low to confess / It means her powers slip away / It means she draws
back Even vases in the making are uncouth What turn of body What rag of wrong
It means her powers slip away / their blooms in jars Over-hearts left oozing And you
we valued still a little more than Christ

Corpse B

There are these flashes / These This female sentence-ing /

These flashes that cover the lawn don’t shelter,
Lily Briscoe says / inside the waves / inside the sick
or murmuring white / around Woolf’s lighthouse¹
The Unpredictable Pattern The Volatile Faults
/ wavering in the gauze in the entire ocean contracting
around What turn of body What turn of body /

Oh, I say, looking at the flower inside Woolf’s bleeding ghost,
/ I read that wrong I blurted out an interpretation contracting around / Blooms in jars
Over-hearts left oozing What Lily / the Painter / describes Today or a Million Years ago
                                          while imagining the table up in the tree like a cheek or a Crown
                                          while imagining the vacant cross with countless bleeding
bodies contracting around it or some wondrous thing within the mess /

is what it feels like to have to
“take shelter from the reverence
which covers all women”

                                                         Lily / the Painter / She continues / is the waves / these
flashes / The site of decimation Love has a thousand shapes contracting around the
vacant cross that covers the lawn The cross that covers the lawn doesn’t shelter And you
we worshipped a little more than Christ Oh, you look like a moaning star contracting
around the entire darkness I think / while listening / to Lily speak from The Flower
inside me The Devil inside me She does not kneel low to confess

                                                                                       “Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her
                                                                                       picture. She could have wept. It was bad, it
                                                                                       was bad, it was infinitely bad!”

I read Lily as she continues / as she is the waves and immediately think of Ariana Reines
I look up the quote / the Hunted Body I’m thinking of and it’s so much closer to Lily /
The Flower The Care Package Corpse A The Fish Moon The Hunted Body Corpse B
What rag of wrong / This poem called *******Hagstar*******than I ever could imagine

“I want to say something about bad writing.
I’m proud of my bad writing.
Everyone is so intelligent lately, and stylish.                                 / Fucking great.
I am proud of Philip Guston’s bad painting,
I am proud of Baudelaire’s mama’s boy goo goo misery.
                                                                             Sometimes the lurid or shitty means having a heart,
                                                           which is something you have to try to have.
                                                                             Excellence nowadays is too general and available
to be worth prizing:
                                          I am interested in people who have to find strange and horrible ways
                                                                                                               to just get from point a to point b.”

Lily continues from the flower inside Ariana Reines’ bleeding ghost / She does not kneel
low to confess She continues having found the strange and horrible ways to get to her
vision / It’s twisted through the hole / contracts around / her indisputably

“She could have done it differently of course;
                                                            the colour could have been thinned and faded;
                                                            the shapes etherealised;
                                                            that was how Paunceforte would have seen it.
But then she did not see it like that.
But It means her powers slip away / their blooms in jars Over-hearts left oozing

                                                                     She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel;

 
                                          the light of a butterfly’s wings lying on the arches of a cathedral”

You pay her price and wonder why you need her Still
You pay her price and wonder why you need her Still
You pay her price and wonder why you need her Still
You pay her price and wonder why you need her Still
You pay her price and wonder why you need her Still

I sit in the classroom and listen to us talk about Virginia Woolf / the flower inside her bleeding ghost / the murmuring sick gently washing around the Lighthouse / the Lighthouse which is the opposite² of Lily’s vision / The Lighthouse which is so far from her / It is enveloped inside her / She contracts around A Literature So Polluted / I think when I sit in the classroom / trembling with excitement / with the realization or notes that are / an incredible texture / of discussion / I sit in the classroom trembling with the realization that maybe I have no idea what I’m doing / writing about these women writing / I sit in the classroom trembling with the realization that my experience of reading Woolf / of reading Djuna’s The Book of Repulsive Women / a book I read she Hated / is not touching a Still woman in the portrait / My experience of reading Woolf / of reading Djuna’s The Book of Repulsive Women / is touching a bleeding ghost The Flower inside me The Devil inside me / Ana Mendiata collapsed in her blood on the pavement below / No One Knows How She Got There / Only That She Screamed / She Screamed The Entire Outline Of Her Own Body A loved bad word/ Oh, you look like a moaning star I think when I sit in the classroom and feel Lily or Ana painting / their bodies contracting around the entire darkness The energy of falling / into a spell This one particular life The outline of its body tracking Charles Tansley or Carl Andre when they are remembered multiple times in the story in To The Lighthouse for saying, Women Can’t Write, Women Can’t Paint, but Woolf never actually lets Charles Tansley say it / She only lets Lily / Ana / The Painter remember it being said / It is enveloped inside her when she says,

“Women can’t write, women can’t paint—what did it matter coming from him,
since clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him,
                                                            and that was why he said it.” And you
we valued still a little more than Christ Today or a Million Years ago Love has a
thousand shapes contracting around the vacant cross that covers the lawn The cross that
covers the lawn doesn’t shelter Love has countless bleeding bodies contracting around it

The body that writes / that contracts the bodies of writing
It must become Dirty too / I am Dirty and Bleeding

                                                    Dirty Critic Dirty Critic Dirty Critic Dirty Critic
Dirty Critic Dirty Critic Dirty Critic Dirty Critic
Dirty Critic Dirty Critic
Dirty Critic Dirty Critic in Love with the countless bleeding bodies

She contracts around An Art So Polluted / She filmed them burning / in the snow / with
their arms up / She filmed them burning / the outlines of her body / in the snow / with
their arms up

 
—

1. “’But how long do they leave men / on the lighthouse?’ she asked. He told her. He was amazingly well informed.” – To The Lighthouse ^
2. “I believe that all novels begin with an old lady in the corner opposite,” says Woolf when she speaks in “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown.” ^
 
 

Carrie Lorig is the author of The Pulp vs. The Throne (Artifice Books), which is her first full-length work. Her chapbooks include nods. (Magic Helicopter), Reading as a Wildflower Activist (H_NGM_N), stonepoems (with Sara Woods, Solar Luxuriance), and Labor Day (with Nick Sturm, Forklift Ohio).