This selection, chosen by guest editor JJ Rowan, is from about:blank by Tracy Fuad, released by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022.
Object Exercise
First you must gather the objects. Open the polish and polish each object until every object is coated in polish, a thin film that takes on the shape of the object. Then dissect every object with a circumstantial blade. When the object is fully dissected, remake it, but more in your image. Then use concise scissors to prune the object, removing what wilts or yellows. Turn up the object sound. Then, dissect again. Hold each piece to check for resistance: if it withers, it's an object. If it shudders, it's a subject.
Tracy Fuad is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the author of about:blank, winner of the 2020 Donald Hall Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Paris Review, POETRY Magazine, The Yale Review, and she is also the author of three chapbooks: PITH, DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD DAD, and Body of Water 2. She lives with her family in Berlin, where she teaches poetry at the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.
JJ Rowan (they/them) is a queer nonbinary writer and dancer. Their poems, not-poems, and interactive performances have appeared in the tiny, Dream Pop Journal, 45th Parallel, and at the SMOL Fair and the Splinter Collective’s Interrupted by Trains, among others. Their most recent chapbook is a simple verb (Bloof Books). They are on the editorial team at just femme & dandy. You can sign up for their newsletter, actual motion, at their website.
