from EVENTS FOLDING [WORLD] INTO OURSELVES

 

Lori Groff

 

 

 

 

1)

 

 

Through emotional lives, ancient, ochre,

magical. I found myself hidden, and it felt hard.

Nonetheless, a mighty magic. How we are linked

is not a spatial anomaly.

 

We come back and back

in wavelengths that dazzle across water and stone.

 

Still, we point to our index of fossils in rocks and

magnetic meteorite bodies. We say to each

other, “do you see that?” In contrasts,

accumulations.

 

 

                         This day, I am non-vanishing, magnetic.

                         To contrast, non-vanishing across fiery spaces only

                         your mouth skyward, over codes. A cohesive self-

                         concept,

 

                         a first language

 

                         to cradle our bones.

 

 

 

 

2)

 

 

Bent down along a language

 

bent

down

a long

language

 

don’t you cower!

 

how far down

how far back

 

how you hold this image

 

a thinking body

bent down

in

two

 

along a language along the speed

of a language

 

from to stand

to kneel

 

you start with improbabilities

 

a posture that does not mark territory

 

a complexity opposite a wasteland

a small water

a vestige of ocean water

pool like a wound

surface removed out from

alone in the multitudinous

uplift of the earth’s crust

 

small water, pool like a wound

whose being on the surface

is not inconsequential

 

small water

extruded

extruded

 

angles all out from

angels all out from

 

a complexity opposite

a wasteland

 

as if in god’s voice

your spatial bargain

is your being

on the surface

 

and your being on the surface

is not inconsequential

 

and the earth’s language is exposed

on the surface

 

and the earth’s language is not

spoken from the mechanisms

of a voice

but from the mechanisms of space

of vacancy

initiation

and uplift

 

and here are smooth planes, wounds in rocks, and lithic feelings

 

and this is not the last world

 

as in another language

I,

we

I, we

 

and this is not the last world.

 

 

 

 

3)

 

 

A woman in N. Africa becomes

a map becomes a self as variation

How in geological time, events, acts of freedom

How the politics of a figure

How the official names

How looking at a self through the confinement of a mountain

How the intensity of backscatter, electrons from a rock

How a variety of signals, charge

How water

How textile

How nerve, artery, vein run alongside each other, aggregate

How covered in mountains

How form and formless

How chimera

How allotropic

How out of frame

How to build with mud and stick scaffold

How the wall is formed, the stick pulled out, how the hole remains

How it means to open toward the outside, to repeat

How no two specimens are alike

How the welfare of the environment and the inhabitants of this space

How the forces of perception

How earth tones

How thumbprint of wind along backs of bodies

How sightline, how execution

How quietly and not

How voids fill in

 

 

 

 

4)

 

 

After rain.

 

Before snow.

Twilight

 

spaces.

Small

 

spaces. Then,

in.

 

Full sun. We

promise.

 

Something

new.

 

 

 

 

5)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lori Groff is an artist and poet.  Her current practice includes painting, drawing, collage, glitched self posits,” and writing.  She is always considering how orientation is amendable and continuous. 

 

 


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