The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Beautiful Machine Woman Language by Catherine Chen

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A Convention Guide for Cyborg [ —— ]

Even when I can’t smell I’m experiencing the world’s vicarious
senses. The nose tingles. Ochre walks.

The sun is a tambourine. A sum of color.

I am covered in hives on this beautiful May morning.

Naturally, I dreamt I was working a hospitality gig on a cruise ship
taken hostage by pirates being workers we are left to die I look out
to the ocean wondering if I could swim to shore before drowning
or before being shot conducting this reasoning is quite tiring so I’m
resigned to dying on the ship where at least I can gather my nerves.

Naturally in another dream I await the gallows I allow the noose to
be snug I step I await the gallows I allow the noose to be snug I
step I await the gallows.

My dreams tell me I am likely to die in a maritime way.

My horoscope tells me I am deferring the consequences of my
actions.

I lick my right inner forearm knowing I’ve made a breakthrough.

We have different theories of fear namely derived from its
presumed shape. She says fear is triangular I say fear is cylindrical.

Every poem contains my desire.

Every poem contains my anger.

Every poem contains my revolt.

Over the years, the doors close. A trigger like a girl ate me up. A
dry swallow. I held my direct gaze at the machine I was servicing.
I wanted her so badly. I wanted her to know our struggles were
adjacent. Increasingly it became difficult to speak in her dialect.
My attention span had shrunk. Yes, it’s true. I was subsisting on
leftover Halloween candy. Am I making myself understood? The
question: one out/of translation. Conclusion A: I am neither
equipped nor inoculated to handle nuance.

Conclusion B: A sense of free form gesture or everyday
calligraphy requires repetition. I feel it when I pen my signature for
petty documents. I felt it when I wrote a thank you card to my aunt
who I hadn’t seen in 20 years.

You could mistake it for a blessing.

I always wanted to transform a painting, e.g. vandalize it. Every
technology reflects the desires of its creator. Fuck the creator. I am
its drone. I’ve told this story so many times, I might have a
complex. Listen: or don’t. I am beginning to distinguish my
subjectivity from hers. It’s entrancing.

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