The Wardrobe's Best Dressed: Clare Louise Harmon's "The Thingbody"

Obsessive compulsive disorder they say the nurses say the
doctors say you have obsessive compulsive disorder rapid
function rumination compulsive compulsion you must muster.
Compulsion to act compulsion to make real vivid visions
bodyscapes mangled papercutter make real the diagram
medieval torture device designed to complete the compulsion the
pulsing compulsion the obsession wherein you are Thingbody.

Thingbody thinks these things these things thither thinks these
things thither that thinks these things that cannot stop. Thinks
thither of that thing emptything. Moment to moment memory
dense memory dense. Inscrutable. A memory dense indiscernible
inscrutable dense unable to parse.

This selection comes from Clare Louise Harmon’s book The Thingbody, available now from Instar Books. Purchase your copy here!

Clare Louise Harmon is a musician and poet. She is the author of The Thingbody (Instar Books, 2015) and If Wishes Were Horses the Poor Would Ride (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including Sixth Finch, PANK, Tammy, Lockjaw, and The Feminist Wire. An advocate for rape survivors and persons in recovery from eating disorders, she regularly volunteers for The Emily Program as a guest speaker and blogger.

She currently teaches violin, viola, and piano at the Louisiana Academy of the Performing Arts and lives in New Orleans with her rescue dog, Tink.

Jennifer Hanks is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet(Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon. Her work has appeared in Arcadia, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Muzzle, Menacing Hedge, PANK, and other journals. She writes an ongoing column, Disorder Reigns, for Arcadia‘s online sundries blog. She is an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans.