Poems and Texts

“Dear Anna (for Suzanne)” by Anna Gurton-Wachter

Dear Anna (for Suzanne)

Dear Anna,

I’m writing to you

because I like reality

so much so, here

the rapid flowering

of the image

replaces

a list I once made

things I refuse to do

I wanted to express

never really being

in my skin, truly

how illness

undresses us

you and me

what is that?

‘you and me’

if it’s intellectual

or anticipatory

what might be

no reference at all

It’s simply about

that word you use

‘labor’

being alone in labor

everything got

telepathic for me

endurance I feel

is a form of

consciousness

the awareness of

all that schooling

I mean time

curious openness

there is no

vulnerability

like it left

all you want

is your body

the moon blown

complexity

herbs that when

you eat them

there’s no more

slavery and

other oppressive

forces die out

that’s all, not less

a drum is beating

which asks

are you in pain?

is this the routine

we perform

when we feel

all of society

a complicity?

I didn’t ask myself

the problems

of freedom in love

but I always enjoy

signs of youth

hidden in myself

fragments drip

slobbering onward

where did I go

to experience

or denounce the viewer?

a shift big and boisterous

in some terrible way

I bargained

towards

being invented

Photo: Anna Gurton-Wachter

Anna Gurton-Wachter

Anna Gurton-Wachter is a writer, editor and archivist. Her first full length book, Utopia Pipe Dream Memory, is newly out from Ugly Duckling Presse in 2019. Other recent work has appeared in Peach Magazine and Vestiges. For more info visit annagw.com / @anna.as.metaphor

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