Stephanie Young

after Bernadette Mayer I guess it's too late to live on the farm I guess it's too late to enter the darkened room in which a single light illuminated the artist stripped from the waist down, smeared with blood, stretched and bound to the table I guess it's too late to inhabit a glass-fronted, white, box-like room, dressed in white, against which the menstrual blood was visible I guess it's too late to start farming I guess it's too late to start struggling to remain standing in a transparent plastic cubicle filled with wet clay, repeatedly slipping and falling I guess it's too late to buy 60,000 acres in Marfa I guess it's too late to begin appearing on the subway in stinking clothes during rush hour with balloons attached to her ears, nose, hair and teeth I guess we'll never have an orgiastic Happening I guess we're too old to carry out maintenance activities in public spaces, during public hours I guess we couldn't afford to simulate masturbation while President Josip Broz Tito's motorcade drove by below I guess we're not suited to "I am awake in the place where women die" I guess we'll never have a self-inflicted wound in front of an audience now I guess entering a sex cinema dressed in a black shirt, jeans with the crotch removed, and a machine gun slung over her shoulder is not in the cards now I guess Clive wouldn't make a good photographic montage in which their male and female faces became almost indistinguishable I guess I can't expect we'll ever have a selection of photographs derived from images produced by the beauty industry now I guess I'll have to give up all my dreams of being seen, clothed and unclothed, being systematically measured by two male 'researchers' who record her measurements on a chart and compare them with a set of 'normal' measurements I guess I'll never be waiting for my body to break down, to get ugly We couldn't get tied together by our hair anyways though Allen Ginsberg got one late in life Maybe someday I'll have the foreshortened barrel of a gun pointing toward the viewer I guess joining our hands around the base's perimeter fence into which they weave strands of wool is really out Feeding the pigs and the chickens, walking between miles of rows of crops I guess examining women's working conditions is just too difficult We'll never have a, never-really-a-collective, a group of women who came together to work on a public mural Too much work and still to be poets Who are the simultaneously-the-beneficiary-of-our-cultural-heritage- and-a-victim-of-it-poets Was there ever a poet who had a self-sufficient loss of certainty Flannery O'Connor raised peacocks And Wendell Berry has raised large-scale spirals of rusted industrial materials in incongruous natural and commercial spaces Faulkner may have spent three days in a gallery with a coyote, a little And Robert Frost asked a friend to shoot him at close range with a .22 caliber rifle And someone told me Samuel Beckett lay hidden under a gallery-wide ramp, masturbating while vocalizing into a loudspeaker his fantasies about the visitors walking above him Very few poets are really going to the library carrying a concealed tape recording of loud belches If William Carlos Williams could be a doctor and Charlie Vermont too, If Yves Klein could be an artist, and Jackson Pollock too, Why not a poet who was also dying of lymphoma and making a series of life size photographs, self-portrait watercolors, medical object-sculptures and collages made with the hair she lost during chemotherapy Of course there was Brook Farm And Virgil raised bees Perhaps some poets of the past were overseers of the meticulous chronicle of the feeding and excretory cycles of her son during the first six months of his life I guess poets tend to live more momentarily Than life in her body as the object of her own sculpting activity would allow You could never leave the structures made of wood, rope and concrete blocks assembled to form stocks and racks, to give a reading Or to go to a lecture by Emerson in Concord I don't want to be continuously scrubbing the flesh off of cow bones with a cleaning brush but my mother was right I should never have tried to rise out of the proletariat Unless I can convince myself as Satan argues with Eve That we are among a proletariat of poets of all the classes Each ill-paid and surviving on nothing Or on as little as one needs to survive Steadfast as any person's glottis, photographed with a laryngoscope, speaking the following words: "The power of language continues to show its trace for a long time after silence" and fixed as the stars Tenants of a vision we rent out endlessly

After the second conference, I would be cast in the role of a young dancer with a prestigious New York City ballet company. I would be cast in the role of the mother, a former dancer now amateur artist, whose career ended at 28 when she became pregnant. I would be cast in the role of the exotic beauty who is more in touch with her sensuality. I would be cast in the role of the director, a cruel and demanding genius who would sleep with the ingenue. I would be cast in the role of someone selected to compete for the part alongside several other dancers. I would be cast in the role of someone who bites the director, and/or doesn't get along with the other dancers. I would be cast in the role of the aging principal dancer. My rigid technique would make me the ideal choice, but I would also lack the passion required by this role. I would practice all the time. I would become increasingly paranoid. I would get drunk and yell, with dark makeup all around my eyes. I would barricade myself in my room. I would become increasingly critical. I would tell her how pretty she is, and carefully pull mittens over her hands before bed so that she does not hurt herself. I would sing her a lullaby. I would see my own image everywhere. I would be annoyed with her. I would paint picture after picture of the person I loved and hated. I would get a rash. I would get into an accident. I would eat the cake offered to me, although I did not want it. I would injure myself. I would hallucinate that I am having sex with my friend, and during this scene there would be a ripping, chewing sound. The scene is obviously misogynist. But it felt so real. I would peel skin away from my fingernails in long strips. It would happen in the bathroom. My friend would perform my role in my absence. I would perform my friend's role in her absence. I would sleep with the director. I would wish to sleep with the director. I would be left alone in the building. I would betray my friend. My friend would betray me. I would feel the envy and aggression of others keenly. I would feel envious and aggressive towards others. I would seem rather childish. I would be rigid and controlling. I would pass out. I would scratch my back until it bled, and wear clothing designed to cover these scratches. I would not be part of the group. I would discover her in my room, wearing my costume, I would congratulate her, kiss her, shove her into the mirror and hide her body. Only then would I notice my own wound. Crying as I watched her performance.