Judy’s right; “This is just an act” is dangerous.
Rather, it denies a danger. “This is just
a blog,” less (and more) so. I am trying to reconcile
performativity and deception by wiggling my tongue
around in my mouth and watching my one dark eye pull
in and out of my chosen background: a stock photo
of roman ruins. “This is just a body.” If I work it just right
my throat is also a corinthian column, my acne washed out
scrubgrass, pixel of flower pixel of skin ad bounded infinitum.
Like a truffle hog, I thrust my head about in search of coincidence
and pleasure, finding better capital in the form
of fungi. My body comes like this now, not a thing
but its angles. I can’t name what I lack, but then
Aktionhose:genitalpanik comes to me, thank god,
by screen, while I curl in my skin, afraid again. This loneliness demands
better material, a landscape to walk by and through, swinging
its limbs into the cool night, its infinitely diminishing distances
and so I make one out of vision, spit, and a cursor blinking in each
pupil. The screen blowing out in haloes where I touch,
I put my hand to her hair her gun her pussy and wonder
what to wear. I close my eyes and see myself with clarity, as an endorsement
of your writing skills on linkedin; as a punnet of cherries floating
four feet above ground; as a flock of bodies in a Kurosawa, thudding
not screaming; as the last received text in my inbox, “I don’t know. Everything
is bad right now. Not tomorrow.”
:::
Mattea Falk is an undergraduate Literature student at American University. She is completely over(-invested in) discussions of the self.
