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We are a public forum committed to collective reasoning and the imagination of a more just world. Join today to help us keep the discussion of ideas free and open to everyone, and enjoy member benefits like our quarterly books.
Caravan of daisies, carafe of desires, this room is a catalogue of belonging. How many vehicles are meant to hold us together, to bring us toward—the light, wavering, is a day dress that addresses the parallel lines the body cannot live within. These curvatures are beginning to look like impassable highways. We are broken down on the side of the road carrying on to the sky to transfix our motors into a lover’s toes, a small drop of blood, carrion we can keep sweetly in a trunk. We are carried by the talons of picture frames, drawers of tissue paper, of handprint cement. The sentiment is oversized. So what. What can we sew to what to stay whole enough to befriend the circles? I’m afraid I am perpendicular to happiness which means my axis is always preoccupied. This belonging is not dimensional. How demented we have become among our bell jars, our paper dolls, our replicas of horses and saints. If we get around to withholding our tongues from each other we can still be alive, can describe ourselves into/as a corner. With our havings, our holdings, we are starting to become citizens of nowhere. With love we are still ordinary. With lamp-stands and ashcans we are navy blue at best.
Meghan Privitello is co-editor of The New Megaphone and author of A New Language for Falling Out of Love, forthcoming.
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