These poems were selected through Sixty Literary, a biannual call for literary writing from writers and artists based in the Midwest. You can learn more about Sixty Lit’s inaugural call for writing here.
(Sentence) I lived among titles that bear no names
I shall recite you a poem that was written by someone else,
with uncited references &
no additional footnote.1
Unnamed sources (Stiffen) shelter me;
Unknowable languages (Murmur) play with me;
Unknown creatures wrestle each other (Hush) and no one shall hear them win and
loose;
Untitled artworks (Stutter) forget-me-not.
I lived among titles that bear no names,
I walked around stacks that bear no classifications,
Names spitting back out origins and
gifters
I have been waiting for a title to come, for
a name to return.
A goodbye-kiss
to be finished, and we can call it a day.
Back to the origin, chop-chop
To: Finish an untitled piece.
- You had two translated versions in your hands. You dived back into a colourless bed. Yet none of those are the ones you wanted to love. I came across a third translation two weeks later.
I am writing about things
Bring it back, bring it back
Don't take it away from me
Because you don't know
What it means to me
-“Love of My Life” (1975), Queen
I am writing with swords I borrowed from a place I was told not to share. I write about this and that,
like your
feelings and my wanderings. I write about issues in margins and footnotes: secret
affairs that no one declared; classified names that a cipher spelt out; nullified enlightenments
that we chased. I write about the drawings I want to draw, I write about the paintings I have
yet to paint, I write about the collages I want to collage, I write about the writings I mean to
write, I write about the folders I should be filing.
I write to suture.
I am writing with erased meanings. I write about below and under, like my two slits that demonstrate
the contemporaries. I write about the body I once had, I write about the same body that
betrays and betrayed, I write about the body I now have, I write about the body that is
out of my prescription’s control, I write about the body of the book.
I write to suture.
I am writing with a 2B pencil. I write about the (correct) balance of softness and hardness, I write
about the (perfect) sharpness of the tip, I write about the (unblemished) whiteness of the stolen
eraser, I write about the (precise) cut of editing, I write about the (exact) copies of the
act of copy-and-pasting, I write about the (accurate) tightness of the spine of my dictionary.
I write to suture.
I am writing with redemption. I write about the movements of memories, I write about the recurrences
of recollections, I write about the assimilations of aliens, I write about the temptations to
tether, I write about the fates of foreshadows, I write about the omens of objections, I write
about the belongings of bootlessness, I write about the longings of landscapes.
I write to suture.
I am writing with myself in myself. I write about how much I have nothing to write, I write about how
many things I have yet to understand, I write about how much I have nothing else left to
write,
I am writing about how much writing I owe you (and you owe me). I shall write anything to avoid writing to you & writing about you. Now, I am failing.2 I write everything about myself to avoid myself being not myself. I write about myself to realise myself is nothing else but just myself who isn’t myself but my self. I write to suture my self to myself, I write to hope that my writings suture myselves, and
still is one self
2. If I wrote you into (my) footnotes, is it still considered failing? Does it count if a printer is the only one who will revisit them? The printer will print the yous out— I am not doing anything. I just put yous here, and never ever, I promise, there. I can write about yous reciting poems to me, yous with carcasses, yous being careful about future, yous being continuous in my writings…and someone will break them apart: I shall be scattered, and my feelings shall be fragmented. And that, I promise, is something I have always wanted to write about.
Recite with me. Undefined, holy, saintly, marginalia
Tread lightly: a desperado’s howl underneath. Bring fragments with you, the witch is up there somewhere. Hoard interpretations but not meanings, the author is present. Fragmenting desires, leave a trail behind. Can I not use question marks to symbolise my curiosities? Jump off the moving rhetorical device, propel yourself at a 45-degree angle. To left and right; My left and your right; My right and your left; My left and my right; Your right and your left Does it matter if I have no questions to ask? Tuck your body, roll with the pace of the hermeneutic circle. To left and right; My left to your right; My right to your left; My left to my right; Your right to your right.my answers are questions to be questioned, Are? Rolling helps to spread the impact out as much as possible on one set of pages. To left and right; My left against your right; My right against your left; My left against my right; Your right against your left. (Or full stops?) May my questions never be answered but live on as my answers to my interests. Answers as a measuring tape: (1)--------------------------------------Ecstatic? (2)------------------------------------Eloquent? (3)--------------------------------------Elusive? (4)-----------------------------------Expansive? (5)------------------------------------Extensive? , here, Does my comma pose itself an uncomfortable stretch, to persuade you, with an interrogation alongside the wrong god?Move away slowly and sideways; allowing one to keep an eye on the obviousness and avoid the contact page. To left and right; My left is your right; My right is your left; My left is my right; Your right is your right. What shall we do to each other? What should we do to each other? What can we do to each other? What may we do to each other? What are we going to do to each other? What have I done to the pages? a paper as a betwixt-and-between The text needs the ( ), I need I Two sheets One sheet Nothing, nothing is a thing, nothing because nothing is a something. halves of equals In threes So, when I say nothing, nothing is a something that is doing something, You get a Master but it is really because I have nothing. Nothing, I have, I have some things, like something, something that is nothing because nothing is nothing and some Not equal because preservation is outside, other things. not inside. Prevailing in suspense joys; within the contained of everything. Temptation is inside Terrified adherents make cult of sanctum. in-house, Inner, sacred; against the world outside of the pits of resistance is everything. outsourced outside. Half & half, never tell Truths slipping, sliding, slurping, slurring, each other Left & Right Unified Body Unique Original Appeal the worlds of both, suffering, scorning, suffocating Everything. Breaking this apart, so it becomes this & that. My left strangling your right, your left choking my right, my right caressing your left, your right nuzzling my left. Time-bound scribbles on canvas distinct from time Unification of time(less) and space(bar) (the measurement of Love-less manuscripts with proposals when events occur) Junction of your front(page) to my back(end) However, took on new Parallax in your backyard shed meanings -----------------------------------------------------nothing Putting them back together------------------- Imagine a variable that can be any real number. Now imagine two pairs of twos. time, and time cannot be seen. As far as I know. Asfar as I go Into shelves Move, manoeuvre, motion-bound; move away from a country Jerking = Observable Hoard =/= collect, stack up: (a) Complete collections of Recollections (b) Recollection of Collections (Complete) (c) Collections of Complete Recollections (d) Of Recollections: Complete Collections (e) Collections of Recollections (Complete) Observe how they relate to each other, below, under, beneath, my left side forever your right side, side with me— Undignified inscriptions
About the author: olivier (b. British-Hong Kong) is a research-based artist+writer and archives worker whose practice is rooted in the ephemerality and the anarchival in queer and trans theory, and ufology. They live in a time-machine, toy with poetics and semiotics, caressing languaging and linguistics.
