Digital Poetics #6 Minor concerns addressed to the spacecraft: Kat Sinclair
When you appeared I was in my pyjamas
devastated, once again
looking for an empty field to scream in
so nobody would come to my rescue,
so I could have my feelings
instead I was disturbed and I don’t care if you’re
very exciting, excessively limbed
I can clamber strangely too
now that you’re here you have to listen
It is as if we were all on a pirate ship
with a hundred planks
walking them all just to feel like
mirage, oasis, blistering ‘tell you about it later’
I would topple if I knew
there was a new board game over there
underneath
or a fresh vegetable
We all have memories of places we have never been
you can call it orientalism
or deja vu
or whining
but I remember you like a dream
before I greet you like a handshake
it’s in all the movies
we both are, some of us
The usual crowd we were all weighing up someone’s worth
by whether they had a spice rack
or a spice cupboard
meanwhile there was a meteor shower
or a magician
or a firefly
like it was not his relationship to the means of production
but the exact twist of his smile
we just knew, the meteors just fell
That summer everything was made out of chiffon
as an assault to armpits everywhere
and those operating the machines
who also have armpits
I’ll add it to the reading list –
sometimes it feels like a conversation starter
networking upstairs in a bookshop
just to throw over the sheets and be,
but every day I discover new implements
I check the French Republican calendar so I know what to celebrate
but you want me to toast myself
for managing it – I would rather stand in the corner
texting her, I hate this and would rather be cooking chilli with you
and wait, there is lint in my belly button again
could you help me pick it out
I would rather not
Oh for once in my life, an arrangement of gentle fingers
a bouquet of everything
a paddling pool deep enough
a rubber tree staying as is
those high apple pie in the / sky hopes
dashed
or just magnify those ants for hours
we can do without latex, I’m sure
If you could make the album of the year into a sex toy
that would be good,
I wish the woods were bigger
but I am happy they are there at all,
but I wish they were bigger,
the summer of fuck lawns can wait
like a garden gate pun,
but it can’t wait much longer
Last year when we salted some broccoli, heavily
and the smoke settled
on our knees
but I couldn’t care less
about Horkheimer, right then
I only wanted to play it all again
before you had to catch the train to work
and I had to cancel therapy, but don’t tell me that
drifting on determination and delusion
Like let’s go to Canada let’s go to Scotland
let’s go disregard everyone
let’s go tomorrow I am so angry you are so right
all the time
you’re some wild garlic and I don’t know how to recognise you
but I know you’re really great
because everyone says so
and nothing ever happened
because nobody ever mentions it
Want you to backdrop me
a smile against a tree,
herring gull yet to steal,
feeding hand yet to be bitten
still in the infant stages of analysis:
how do I best hold you
how do I best hold my ground
meanwhile she only went and got kettled again
It is the same in every clef:
sleep be with me
and also your breathing sounds
like a podcast, but real
I remember his house
all the clocks were set to four twenty
we are all n00bs here, I choked on it –
join my guild, I’ll explain everything, just come here
When you first arrived I thought you were an omen
but now I see you’re really fucking tired
I’d offer you my hand but I’m double-wielding
just reach into my pocket, take whatever’s there
I don’t remember but it can’t be worth more
than the rolling of a wrist, held
Anyway sometimes my tongue just aches so
I request that nobody wear boots around me
for their own safety
in case of emergency
smash my face in
for justice
I will write a good piece, and forfeit 20%
to a charity of your choosing
this is, I think, the right way to be
or at least it is the right hat to wear, the right way to wear it
I am very new here
I want to step inside
I want to feel the beam of light
I want to carry no belongings
I want to have a field day
I am obsessed
I am convinced
I am reckoning with
I am saying I am
I am suddenly realising
do you understand?
*
Kat Sinclair is a doctoral student at the University of Sussex, researching the political economy of feminised robots. She is the author of The Very Real Prospect (Face Press and Earthbound Press, 2019) and a number of poorly stapled pamphlets printed in her bedroom. She is also a member of the Devil’s Dyke Network, a queer feminist arts collective in Brighton.
*
This publication is in Copyright. Kat Sinclair, 2020.
The moral right of the author has been asserted. However, the Hythe is an open-access journal and we welcome the use of all materials on it for educational and creative workshop purposes.
