Introduction to Anonymity (I)
Consider Hecuba. Consider the lilies. Consider the captain of any
team. Consider yourself lucky. Even your own mother forgets you.
You, too, can ignore the pain in just minutes a day. Refine your
superstitions, revive your age-old proclivity to fabulate. To be
flooded with faces, to be anointed, to be inundated with molecules
of jasmine or sheet metal or gold leaf or stagnant soil. Now, try
amputating that vestigial ego. Try building a dark edifice or another
dying species. Meditate upon the walls until you find a cave, a
hypodermic needle, or a childhood memory. Who do you want to
know? Who wants to know you?
—
This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!
Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). In addition to How to be Another, her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015) and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Luna Luna, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.
Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.
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