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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