bleak fragments of desire
Full moon in snowy January—I look out the window like into a white room with long, soft shadows.
I’m getting pretty good at wintering. I was even better at it 20 years or so ago. In my youth, darkness was a challenge I had the inner fuel to light. At 20-something, night is a challenge. With age, it can feel like a threat. But I’ve other skills now, beyond innate wild fire, and now is the time to hone them.
I hope you are wintering well.
I write to share some poetic extravagances perfect for wintering with:
she considers his question in fragments of verse
Long ago, I wrote a terrible love letter. I tore it up. Inspired by Carson’s translation of Sappho, I reassembled the torn paper into fragmented poems; a little reckoning with a love as vagrant as wind.
Later, I recorded myself reading the fragments, mixed them with dissociated sound effects and a broken riff, then made a movie with images of the text. she considers his question in fragments of verse was published this year in the University of Alaska’s Permafrost.
Two pretty postcards
For you. The first contains a line I too often repeat to myself : “bleakness shimmers.” Were I to moon-gaze tonight in the snowy cold, I could repeat it to myself once again.
I love the second poem: it’s in almost-verse and the closing image— of stars ordered between two cracked columns amongst a colossal ruin— is my own private, sardonic, epic vision of love.
Note my hand-made postage stamp.
Two postcards in Wild Roof, Issue 4
“Shore” is discussed Ep 3 of this podcast
A drunken passion play
After nearly 2 decades of strange theater-making, I pulled together some unfinished work into one miniature magnus opus. Intimate Things is a surreal and poetic mix of dialogue, essay, song, slide-show, and interrupted monologue. Swell Henry imagines conversations between legendary Medieval scholars, monastics, and lovers, Heloise & Abelard, climbs to the top of the Empire State Building hoping to hear from God, then winds up drunk in a bar.
I am blessed that Azure fell in love with the whole thing, and has published it in its entirety.
Volume 5, Issue 1 of Azure
Is this a good time to mention
that my art-pop radio-play concept album these fountains rare here was streamed in 17 countries last year (according to Spotify)! It’s the story of one woman’s quest for the peculiar springs that are deep enough for her to bathe in.
LISTEN TO my most streamed track Hekate on Spotify—my own take on the crossroad blues. I don’t meet the devil; I meet the dark goddess of hounds and liminal thresholds.
Have you watched the three videos for the album lately? Gosh, I look young.
with joy and a little shimmer,
L