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

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Museum of Abandon

Like works in progress,
or being as a kind of magic. Being as
open-mouth
breathing. Knowing how loudly
you exhale. Every two years, ((I)) invented
new prose modeled after you.
{A.I.} cannot intimate a stanza without
blushing. Because
chapters intimidate me. Right incomplete thoughts.
This began adjacent to
purgatory. Notes on performance: seeking contentment in
fragments. Its image
of everything stopping. Abruptly.
Writing loses
meaning, it allows
words to stand for
themselves. But that’s a lie.
More than anything I write to be reminded of the body pushing past, sharpening
pencil after pencil. The body who
amuses herself with
a story about plastic bags. Nausea
followed. Couldn’t ((              )) gender
my body otherwise? Even as I {{ don’t }} move in time,
my body
remains vibrant in its
disintegration. I am not my
body. Meaning: it
hasn’t changed one bit. Count the gum
wrappers littered
about the city, shiny,
heavy.

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