HEAT Series 3

She was lying to several different people for money. She didn’t ‘not come’ from money; her mother had some money and since her mother was dead Romy had some money. She was twenty-nine. ‘I’m twenty-two,’ she said. Not everybody had to be a revolutionary. If she were rich she would be good at it.

Define yet again this propensity to write journals – an ongoing conversation with oneself, the inner necessity to define to a certain extent one’s relationship with the events of one’s life…

How difficult it might be to abandoned and alone, at Easter, at Roma Trastevere Station, watching trains arriving and leaving without you to all sorts of exciting destinations; knowing everyone else was on their way up to the mountains, or off to the seaside; to visit with friends and family; to partake of festive wine and cured olives and fattened, delicately spiced, young lamb.

when I did bleed, some months later, I found that same / humiliation, the conversation I’d rehearsed, how to tell / my mother I was somehow now more grown, a mush / of words I could not say: instead I tried to hide it: and

To lean back and forth on the common room rocking horse, thinking that I was part of something, a motion if nothing else, that might eclipse my pure presence for a moment. Pure, as in not part of anything; hardly counted, hardly desired, and if desired then not fitting.

A museum of objects in my study that accompanied the long journey of writing still cast their wonderment through thoughts and imaginary possibilities; the many pictures on the walls and desk – a small print of a Rainbow Serpent, birds, art, photos of dust storms, haze, smoke, a young boxer, mythical landscapes in Asia – all had this responsibility.

While travelling in the mountain realm I discover in clear weather how unbusy the Earth / can be mountain after mountain as far as the eye can reach. / Lonely, I make myself noticed by touching with my left elbow and right big toe / the beginning and ending of a hundred-metre-long white thread.

i’m not scared of anything / the door’s just nicer shut / and so are the windows / and the drains, taped over / but the vent’s wide open / because i cannot reach it, / so i watch it like TV and / huntsman comes right in.

Julius, was the name of my first love
at summer camp
different rules applied, he & I were allowed
to hold hands
people smiled indulgently, called us ‘the couple’
‘the camp couple’
on my part, guilty as charged

When I was young, I realised my body / was something to be held back or kept / in its place, so I have mastered the art / of observation, how to watch faces for / a frown or grimace: signs of weather.

The farewells are what I remember. How thin and white R. looked beneath his shock of hair when I said goodbye to him for the last time and he nodded to me without lifting his head from the pillow, just briefly closing his eyes. How I didn’t go back to his bed, but simply closed the door behind me. The next day I had to pick up his things from the hospital, including the razor I’d charged for him the day before. The razor was charged, but R. was dead.

The Leech / You’re a sycophant, repugnant. Vile bacchant— /
you suck and glut, fill like a slimy phial. No denial /
of the claret in our veins. Fat phlebotomist, /
yes, you were used to treat ailments—fevers, gout, /
haemorrhoids, headaches, clots, bleeding wounds /
and gums—you thrived, made doctors rich.

8) he followed me on Instagram, I followed him back / just to be kind, and he introduced himself as a physicist / building a time machine and asked if I / was interested to go back to the precolonial Tapanuli / because he had the white man’s guilt, / the Dutch person’s guilt, the coloniser’s guilt, / but also the urge / to verify if my ancestors were really man-eaters, / ‘Aren’t you at least a bit, teeny, tiny, curious?’ / he replied, ending it with a chicken leg emoji

I was sitting on a park bench in winter waiting for my spine to register the chill. The sun was on the side of my face, and I could hear a soccer match. I tried to follow each player without looking at the oval; the players scattered and flickered, and I wanted to be the literature, the story – was sick of merely gusting at the side of it. I figured the first step would be to get cold, to be still, and yet activate a thought. To run my fingers.

It is autumn when László sends his introductory message on the dating app. Seasonal is gripping on to their job while their life falls apart in a foreign country. They are not sure that talking to the world in this state is a good idea, but they don’t know what else to do while they are in free fall. They try to trust that this breaking apart is also a coming together.

Cat’s Pantoum / Cat in curve, perched on the side table / She said, holding out her hand / House cat leans forward, leaps: / A dislocation finds its moment