Genevieve
Lee
Working Note
triptych
a three-sided prism or spectrum
each a portraiture, a portrayal spun out, refracted and recollected
3 lines of vision,
formed in the same way fresco is prepared for
ash dusted over perforated paper creates a pattern, a series
of blemishes or guides
a pattern is created, cycle of images depicting familiar and imagined objects
collapsing a sense of distance and moving beyond personal history
3 perspectives : she – an account, we – an address, I – an antecedent
all of these works included in How2 are selected from She –
navigating distances, while singing
in the way Venetian women would sing to the sea, sing
to unseen boats carrying their husbands and sons aboard
I hoped to read experience in the physical world, and communicate this
by way of
parable, parabola
each part, based on the writings of a woman, dialogue with one another and in the end, become the same woman read or seen or depicted in base-relief
she, written while reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning
we, written while reading Simone Weil
I, written while reading H.D.
“Step backward almost indistinguishable
and the others are gone
Daylight misplaces memories of night
Light erases what we push into it”
— from Mutable Fish
Dusk, movement sudden, then held. She arrives cloaked between
two bridges. Water reflecting color shape of a darkened figure,
distorting its qualities continually. A hollow surface condemned to
be only that stretching over its body. Marble torso, hands, feet are
fist pulled to surface. Becoming resurrected returns weight. Thin
air introducing thin air spoiled yet following.Resumed, she stumbles. Row after row of birch shimmer mystery.
Elongated shadow announces a hesitating solidity. Bridge forcing
itself across, she knows what it is to be drenched and pulled under.
And she crosses, moving past mothers with carriages, couples.
She finds an address in blue tile, knocks, disappears.
present mere resounding
resonant possibility of disappearances
“she cannot take” pieces fragments
grip bruised roots
hidden charms of glass and minute
metamorphosis marked by gathering roses
act of opening
mysterious adventure of sorts
go up towering
full body torque
she knew stories rewritten
always an issue of power
seduction a refusal to divide
dereliction unwilling lazily years blown
snow surrounding her in a whirl of decay
disappearing presently
even forgetting a name
silent acknowledgement
even looking in the direction
of towering obelisks
crowd her journey
daringly thin horizon loyally
donning veils and many lush private colors
whatever terrain moves
under hovering shapes listlessly
obeying some innate order to continue
from where might such an order be issued
bleached shore paralyzed with fish spilled
from painted buckets lack water
crush of air exhaustion
impending despair swims
inappropriately parched
she drops a desert-valley
palm sized rock
claim any terrain vivid
pecking at a folded map
‘the self is always with you’
simply said without fragile definitive
you me you
‘yes’ to ‘could you live here, here?’
flowers in hands of gypsy children
related the way mud freezes, snow provides
luminous secrets to be ignored
white desert once lake
trim boxed-hedge once dust
can she still insist
on identifiable charts
clipper shipping from here
particulars are so easily erased
she is not interested
in names anymore
deadly she was boxed
true yesterday and somehow believes
in something else
not past but recalled
she is possession to have is to live
under or hovering above delusion
skeptical of cakes, glass, color
she sings, ‘too – no,
is that the first or the last one’
untrust eyes, sight, person
how did he know it was closed, was it
what she wanted was to lift
what can be lifted and let go
depending an immeasurable decent
human voice echo, strata
she has lost
an ability to see in the dark
counting to herself, she refuses darkness
by way of sapphire wool, opal cotton, amber silk
and walks, always walking
around a periphery peering into knot holes
patient trees mark and flip past
unspeakable she wakes from sleep
morning of geographic light
pierces these two shared rooms and bodies
she is dirt, dry plains created by looking back
and rests
heavy, she is used to the rest
she, having trapped
circle in dirt, a switch
branch and dried by separation
material wound around
keeping her
warm by yards, by breath
by day in and day
out sleeping through, not sleep
with dreams material
without, it would be too painful to be
without
to shutter open
left open as a shutter, across
mortared stone built up
toward home and street like cat
abandoned fed chased away
bandit, catching fish
from a cruel unapologetic landscape
what is cruel and how to know
escape over land or ocean she
is if lucky and pretty
aquarium to escape is to breathe
need and impose what she sees
paleography adored stone
and she continues so
in a sea of fabric or looses her place
pages depicting copulation and introduces
perspective, extenuation out, always out
where circle and bend and curve
she suspects tiny deaths
rooms that tempt the girl
want to be on another side
of this word you give plain
amber
flip pictures
cards
into a pile
gentle
winds cross stone floor
secluded conch
infant host
and recollection
fragile headdress
trails weightless
oyster
tongue
nun or bride
threat,
already at a beginning
vessel
missing line
and story
respiration
accumulates
condensed
so visible
sepia
distorted under renditions
angular fragments
ivory tones
sediment or older rock
curved, hollow
marrow
slight
in the absence
an unannounced respite
fragile attendant
utterly silent
Bio: Genevieve Lee is a writer and poet. After having lived in California for some time, Lee moved to Austin, Texas where she lives with her husband and one-year-old son when they are not in Vilnius, Lithuania. Some of her work has appeared in various magazines and journals including Fiasco, Atomicpetals, and Mam. The selections here have been taken from a manuscript entitled Mutable Fish. Other longer works include Letters to DeZora, fictional letters of memory, and Nothing to Declare, poetical writings in English and Russian.