fannish post of the day

http://birdseyeview.livejournal.com/614627.html

10 Years' Apprenticeship in Fantasy

[I jump on the National Poetry Month bandwagon with, wait for it, prose. I'm obsessed with the prose poem letters that Lucie Brock-Broido does, and I've been lucky enough to find some of them online]

Ten Years' Apprenticeship in Fantasy
by Lucie Brock-Broido

O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.
—Sleep and Poetry

My Darling C,

There is something to be said for Nature after all, dusk
pending, variable stars. I have had a change in luminosity.

All winter long, I've tried not to write to you. There is something
too final to it I should think. First, news of America:
the farmers are being winnowed out again. Now that I have
cable television, I am in touch with the world. In the rain last
night, rice went for twenty-five cents a pound in the Midwest.
Blacks lined the barnlike edges of their city, umbrellaed by
eaves & politics & the fair price of near-proteins. I, myself, as
you know, have been starving alternately for a decade. Everyone
wants to know why & I tell them it's my way of holding
the world back. Also, on the evening news, I saw a six-legged
steer. The father (his master) reports that Beauty is in the Eye
of the Beholder. He loves that thing. Everyone wants to know
how many hearts it has. Only one.

In the more immediate vicinity of my house where—you
should know, it is just on the verge of twilight—I have
courted this darkness lying face down into my hands all afternoon,
absolutely loathing the light, doing Gestalt fantasies
(you're allowed, I hear, to feel healthy in erotic dreams of
submission), waiting for an orange moon to bloom into the
nightsky, waiting for absolute quiet, waiting to get vulnerable
again.

Where I used to live, the fog slid off the great bourboncolored
mountain to roost around my house at dawn. It was
as thick as a religious cough. Here, cats come down the corridors
of the city streets like the selected survived. No one is
rich anymore. The extended family makes its comeback in the
clapboard houses where all porch-sitting has suspended until
spring.

There's a big to-do about lymphocytes and immunities, what
with all of us living so close together, the quick, violent,
unapproachable deaths of so many of us here. The body's
weather allows each germ to enter musically; ethereal, full-blown.
Of lymphocytes, I imagine they are one-celled stars in
the big liquid chambers of the body underwater: glowing &
attentive, lighting the way as they linger in that great invertebrate
chain of hankering.

I know you get depressed when I get all lofty like this. I've
been reading the Romantics since three o'clock. Even the
poets married. I find comfort in this fact, though it besieges
me with awe. Those of us who are susceptible to weather
might be marred by the great heaving effort of the winter as
it turns.

As I approach evening I wait for the sound of stars crackling. I
have never heard this noise, not yet. I imagine it is never cool
there in the long, bright, monolithic hour of each star. It
tickles me, actually. That this light received expired long
before I ever spoke. Like this letter which, if passed from
hand to hand, will reach you long after I am gone. This
moment will continue for as long as you imagine/ Me. Until
the star goes blank & quivers/ Until it becomes vividly
cold/ Possessed by an old/ Gravity & falls.

In closing, let me remind you of the Siamese twins separated
not long ago in Canada. They let the little one, the concave
half, be girl. Without her he will skip quicker, eat more
heartily, raise up his own kind & I think he should be given
that one good chance. What better reason to go on living
than to repeat yourself autobiographically? She didn't have
that chance you understand.

I know the storm has reached past your knees by now & the
electricity falters & the mail has become erratic & you're
living on your thoughtful supply of canned goods. Don't let
your teeth & hair get weak, as certain vitamins & minerals are
missed sorely in a bland diet of single-minded sustenance.
Pray only that the heat inside lasts until this thing has passed.
Stay up all night if you have to, to avoid bad dreaming. It can
hurt you & I need you. I am, as ever, yours.