this regret machine

  I seek a peace in the world, watching from my time alone, thinking about the words I’m not writing. I sit, uncertain in myself. When was the last time I felt good in this space? I live for the questions I leave myself. In my otherness, the peace I look for is found in the mothers before me, the mothers I do not talk to, the mothers I reject, and the mothers who reject me. I am a body built of the otherness of a woman who cannot be a mother, an art left for another to transcribe. Before my brother was born, my mother would take me to galleries of her choosing, some she had designed, some she found interesting. There were some I understood, some I found boring, some we took down together. These summers were spent removing art with my mother from cold, white-walled rooms, leaving them with less, but leaving the air fuller. The last summer, there were the pencils. I remember this sculpture in perfect lighting, then recovering pencils about the house from lifeless corners. The pen...

  What are her insides made of? Are they technical? Too technical to comprehend or take apart? Why does your curiosity have to overstep somebody’s boundaries? Are they intrusive or intuitive? Where does the soul come into the mechanical? How does the soul affect the mechanical? Where do the two intersect? Where do you learn that by questioning it, you’re still indulging this way of thinking?  Worst, and best case scenario, I admit, I think I have killed you. You’re there, sitting idly, watching me panic over you. I’m pacing confusedly about your assumedly dead body. You are fine. I will be fine. Your body is dead. The soul of you remains, patiently not yet reanimate. All things inanimate are full with soul, and this soul is built from the carbon of patience. I hate how you wait. Find something better to do. Don’t look at me with dead eyes, I’m busy. I’m making myself busy. I have things I want to write. Femnist literature output, high frequency. Nonsense writing, aff...

    Their body chose to wake up. From billions of shattered and fleeting fragments, consciousness came back to her like liquid honey, sticking to her gums, spilling through their throat, sickening in her stomach. Their skin became aware of itself, the sweat and the quiet and the space they all filled. Breathing came next, a slow, needed exchange between the body and the bedroom. The air was heavy wet velvet on her tongue. She was awake, breathing, and real.  This year was the first year I started working. Properly working. Full time, seven days a week, zero hour contract work. I’m living the student experience, tossed between three jobs. The hours are nonsensical and shifting. From January to June, I would have a 05:00 start, 06:00 walk, to make it for a 07:30 start. On the same day, my shift could end at 16:00, and I’d start another shift at another job at 17:00, until 20:00 before walking home.     Too, fitting seminars, lectures and reading into this lab...

 

So i can say something useful. So i can say something useful.       The words haven’t been here lately. I don’t know where they’ve been. All words are lost in prepositions — where does it belong? When did it come here? When are you going to write that letter? Are you alright? This isn’t self doubt. No, I have moved past the season of self doubt. I think I can write confidently, maybe even fluently. I’ve hardly written anything worthwhile in months. I’ve hardly written anything worthwhile in months. There’s nothing worth saying. Repetition is a composite trick of the hand, filling the mould of content with a word count. My brain is cooked. Steamed in dishwater, stinking like unclean dishes. The smell of burnt chemicals dries the nose through. It’s a certain kind of lingering rot that sticks to the interior of my skull. I’ve been washing dishes for three days a week for the last while. The dishwashing machine does the meaningful work. I only clean around the edges,...

  upcoming zine

  The body speaks through the mouth. The mouth often screams. The Flesh of The World by Xandra Metcalfe, Uboa , are four tracks, spoken over twenty minutes. ‘Here it is asked, ‘where does a body end’’. The text is fearful and fearing, exploring the marred ground of body dysmorphia, the ‘schizophrenic dissolution’ of self, and the existence of an internal ‘other’. The space around us is sewn into our being, as time becomes irrelevant, space becomes the host for all thoughts. Who rules over this body, the ‘other’ or the god? The body is four tracks on a Bandcamp EP. Terfs are shit. They are still breathing and using the deaths of children as a voice for their own rancid disputes. They are creatures. They seep into our fears. As does the dysphoria itself. To those whom it is known, it is the killer. Metcalfe is exploring this dissociation here. Body is body. Initially, Metcalfe reasons an objective idea of what the body is, sightless and sensory (Exsanguination). The body is whole...