Purple Magazine
—
rachael allen
POETRY
text by RACHAEL ALLEN
artwork by RITA ACKERMANN
§
Are you
done with it?
Fly in the buttercream of a plastic
rose.
I stand where we first met
and am inconsolable.
The river was moving too quickly
and
the bloated strands of it all at once.
The river and the wires above it
shaking like a fit
that perfectly matched my mood.
Crazed moon options in the sky.
Coastal grains
solar noon.
A catastrophic resistance to
other people
that comes after a great saturation
of feeling, an adrenal failure.
I’m leaving Europe while the clouds
look British,
a catastrophic
resistance to other people that
comes after a great saturation
of feeling, an adrenal failure.
History just goes binge purge
binge purge
like me and like me it’s heart
busted by the river.
I’m knackered.
As knackered as the
Madonna della Misericordia.
*
Emotions are zooed into
the borehole of a tree.
Even as I look in on them
they are becoming extinct.
I would have had your children.
Beneficial and tempered,
marital, as water boatmen.
No-no really.
It’s winking, this disaster horizon,
and walking backwards
into rain
with only one emotional cloud.
One emotional cloud and
the red outline of trees.
Price the tree’s worth, that hosts
a government of microbe
wet-nurses
that supports a sequence of
systems that lean on me
(a man; a gut).
§
Green lawn, peppered
blue steak, burning intensely,
like an insect combusting
in one of those restaurant
machines;
the dying egg in such an insect
is its ignited inflight system.
±
I am keen to pick back the cuticle
of the earth
and see what’s underneath,
pick out the emblems
of woodlouse, parasite-fossils,
the loads
of old skin pregnant with old cells,
deteriorating.
<3
What is it? Connectivity.
A screaming figure flailing
their body on a concrete altar.
Mythical, an undiagnosed
condition.
Blemish on your neck the shape
and mark of a religious burn,
I did that.
This is the worship condition.
What’s a gun in the mouth
like a body under the tongue
all purging out like gods purged
from mountains.
§
Deep red alert sounds in
the fake suburb built
to practice catching terrorists
who gut real suburban homes
for their myriad developments.
Military base on the edge
of the beach
near the shoreside firing range
and offshore rigs, which look
as though they’re moving
slowly towards land.
Contested dome and boundaries
of earth,
charred remains kept away from
the house,
but keep me in mind
something like an animal corpse
in your peripheral vision.
The dark field obscures me
but I’ll be waving hello.
Someone takes in night air settling
on a purple field.
There she goes walking,
see love move as a virus
altering preposterously
sere scenery.
oo
A figure I love silently, or discreetly
cast in stone. Ants congregate
around her chalk eye.
I love the night watcher in her
delicate weather
cast abundantly, without luxury.
He swims and the lights come on,
how the moon indicates, one trail,
the night goes by quickly while
everyone sleeps,
and he jumps through the path
of delicate insects.
The wood is at a slant against
hills that are tipping, uncast
blocks of green.
The figures grow in their own
ways, and reach to
each other, silently through rooms.
We are walking on unstable plates
what remains stable in the water
one kneeling figure with her arms
around her face
one kneeling figure with her arms
outstretched.
oo
I watched myself perform
as though televised
watched the great ice shelf
sink into the blue abyss
learned about the paradise crow
on the History Channel
inaccurate drawings of birds
the presenter says, led to
years of misinformation, until
finally, they were seen for
what they truly were.
I will be believed one day
if not for this performance
then perhaps my next.
What would happen if there was
a microphone installed
somewhere in this bedroom?
For the life of me
I cannot remember
what we ever talked about.
END
RITA ACKERMANN, MAMA TANK QUEEN, 2020, OIL AND CHINA MARKER ON CANVAS, 70 X 77 INCHES, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH GALLERY
RITA ACKERMANN, THE BEST YET TO COME, 2020, OIL, ACRYLIC, PIGMENT, AND CHINA MARKER ON CANVAS, 75 X 65 INCHES, COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND HAUSER & WIRTH GALLERY
