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tracing the aura of a continent

documentation of live performance

for Sine/Symbol New Media Arts Festival at MOCA Tucson

Tucson, Arizona

2025

 

*title from Claire Wahmanholm's Meltwater

--

 

Spring

 

September

With a belly like wet clay

stuck down heavy, I want to know with

my body the weight of

my offspring in pounds and

ounces and gravity and

how will it be to become centrifuge?

The little one slips in and

out of my future seeing

all the graves I’ve dug so far.

October

Raptor’s shadow cracks down over tiny
bodies all one now scattered–
thin skin and massive break, make
the same moral of each story.

The bobcat sinks their claws into my
spine hanging from my back furious,
confused.

 

Everything i fear will come to pass–

tomorrow
or the next day
or sometime after that.

 

I will listen
to what my friends sing into the air–
Herald, all at once,
O the end of every
thing
I’ve
ever
known.

Grief exalted to the highest beams,

to the star at the top of the altar,
pushing buttresses to crumble.

 

Turn it all over
once, twice, again–
with a shovel
or a spoon
look at each side until it is certain that you can see all, for sure, for real, there’s nothing you don’t see

'moving forward' (as they say) you won’t miss a trick.

Motor rips air–
every dog in the neighborhood knows the coyote walks,

beetle wings sound on a metal screen.
I will listen
as I lay in the empty tub shivering
with our dog
as the fireworks explode
and the guns pop off
and the fence posts are hammered
into the earth
dark moon hanging–
tell everyone.

November

Pressing the fuzzy flesh
of this little threenager - this love mouse;


the child has asked for a massage
(for he is the parrot on his mother’s aching shoulder)


knowing nothing, thank God, of bone-weariness
knowing nothing, thank God, of times so lonely
that touch arrives only upon request.

It’s true that his small muscles work hard
and that I care it’s just

that I want my own

so badly
that I’m afraid I’ll rip him apart

take a piece for myself.

As usual, my blood arrives–

reproachful clots of babylessness​

chest tissue tenderizes sore and ripping

muscles twist and tear.

In every mirror I stick out my well-bloated belly pretending

it isn’t just another emptying; not-baby.

 

Clutching my lower back as if I were carrying the weight of life

instead of the low tide.

 

The paper ends of my tea twirl in the wind as I carry my biggest jar from the house to the car,

keep my aching womb warm as I live another day.

For if I’m not going to carry yet

I’m going to carry myself.

I am.


December

Swollen vessels

tiny cordyceps capped in orange;

a big year for mushrooms, it’s being said.

How impossible, every cup,

every color, shape, piece of the 

way the land talks.

 

Be not frozen in thy

grief, gigantic doldrum

of grey and pale

splinters like hairs sticking

every which way even

when you can’t move they sting.

 

Crick crack out of the stillness

knees buckling, shins splinted

crusted eyes puffed like rice;

Begin, please, this way now

I can’t promise you much but I’ll

Be there too

January

Lift eyes towards heart;
future
extends in each direction, stretched

corners pushed full of 
breaths taken together with
mouths full of lemon and herbs

 

Tell me again about how we wanted
all this
way before we asked for it;
I know,
and I still need a promise from you
to be gentle with my flesh,
flayed, and cracked skull.
Please hold my thumping cavern in
unshaking hand, please
fix my car and cabinets, please
give me more, please

 

Strings on both guitars slackening,
tuned to bloodstream,
here I know I might rest
soundless.

 

February

Two boys play together in love, our house fills with yelps and growls;

this is you, and this is me–

flames still in windless air.

In the world we know and

the one we don’t,

wet dirt, you tell me the plane

went down.

Smooth rocks carved

perfect smooth and

stacked rinds one

atop the other.

 

Silver dome over wheeling

cherubs, puffed light through

translucent down, nodes swollen

with water, sun breaks;

soft green below.

Families chitter on leafless branches;

yellow, the favorite color of my lover,

rare and piercing bright

furls out at the ends.

Which day do I take the trash out?

Which day do I listen for the horses?

This day, smoothed over like

all the rest.

 

March

It is absolutely right, that we may
scorch our voices so,
and, together, close all eyes
so that we might hear the poems better.

It, too, is absolutely right
that the tables should be laden
with flowers at every spring birthday.

April

I saw the place
in the woods
where someone caught or killed a bird,
feathers everywhere
but only everywhere in this one little spot.

 

Everywhere else looked like the woods always looks–
full of life, and death, but smaller and bigger than a bird.

 

May

It is spring again and I

am what grows inside.

Small and new, unshy,

kinetic

hair curling humidly:

only this day could bring itself forward with such lightness;

glands sore and begging,

I say thank you.

© 2025 Anna Brody

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