Fall Fell Felt

Anna Hawkins
Untitled Art Society

Felled

Lauren Fournier

in this space, self-identified beta males feed
on the empty thrills of women (girls) failing

what would it look like to take pleasure
in women flourishing?

reddit bros and the great descent
hell is the place where all pathos has died
where bodies are dis- and de- and obj-
the view from below: lacking perspective
falling into an unfeeling oblivion

ohhhhhh OHHHHHH!!!
their laughter feels violent
like great cuts
what it could sound like to laugh with (not just at)

falling is fast
vroom rev speed masc
funny like jackass

the view from above: this thing called life
all bodies are tender and precious, she says
whooosh whooosh
lurve curdle snuggle smoosh
we know this, some place

1The yoga teacher at the YMCA tells me this during a restorative yoga class that I crawled to the other day, pulling my hurting body down the street, heavy with the weight of it all. When she says this I feel tingly and affirmed, held by the ground. I also feel ambivalent and ashamed, aware of the contact between my head and my back and my legs and the concrete floor beneath me, a white girl feeling held in a yoga class taught by another white girl.

pick each other up
again, mend, hold, bend
soberly feeling that thing
called empathy, that thing
called desire, something like
real pleasure something closer

in this space, feminist artists re-embody
what has been disembodied, process the content
through their own affective landscapes
re-insert pain where there should be pain

and pleasure where there ought to be pleasure
focus in on the site of hurt, then healing
behold: it’s queerly vital (to fail)

only magic can put this tree back together

sincerity is a dangerous thing

What's on your mind?

Teresa Tam

Is indifference a form of violence?

  • Interference *Silence*
    • The floor is cold
        • I’m not yet
    • So from where I lie
        • Even if only temporarily
            • From here I can see everything
    • Even if it’s all so far away
  • Nothing is all that innocent, is it?
  • Don’t speak like you’re reciting a thesis paper
        • Melancholic pleasure indulged only when desperate
          • A *useless*yearning*
          • Staring as if it means I can exist

Mythologize your uprootedness to legitimize yourself.

  • It’s for the best, but for whose sake?
    • Accepting yourself doesn’t mean you think you’re beautiful
        • Nothing room service can’t clean
    • **sweatingprofoundly**
  • Why worry about irrelevancy when being real is a problem
      • I see someone pretending to be an alive person
      • A parody of a good person
          • This used to be funny, why don’t I find this funny anymore?

Find me in the pause, in the eye that desperately avoids lingering anywhere and yet, never moves.

  • Sounds that mean nothing except to convey the pain of not being words
      • Knowing*
          • We thought words would save us
            • Break*
            • It was never about words
            • Words for those who have something to share
            • We were never enough as people, for words
  • Mistaking rotten for ripe
      • Maybe I just hoped that this would never end
  • The world doesn’t need to know who I am

The Picture Files

Jacquelyn Ross

She preferred to burgle in the late morning. That way, she figured she’d have the whole afternoon to work on her collages at her leisure before reporting to the bus depot for her evening shift. There were a couple of houses a few blocks over that she liked to hit best, houses of other women in their late fifties who kept lots of old family photos kicking around the kitchen and in the cracks of the sofa. She prioritized pictures that would showcase her feminist project in a positive light, but admitted to the frequent gathering of materials for her growing “Women in Magazines” file too—pictures of ladies putting on mink coats or slumping poolside like rotting sticks of butter—just to show the hypothetical people of the future what her lady-kind had put up with all this time.

She kept her collages carefully catalogued: organized by subject matter and sandwiched between sheets of acid-free paper in a series of binders stowed in one of those rolling storage units under her bed. The binders had labels like “Strong Female Bosses” and “Ladies Smoking Pot” and “Women Proudly Falling Down Stairs”—subjects she felt would show her people in their most three-dimensional aspects. She rejected the assumptions of certain men in her life that her interest in collaging had its roots in that feminine counterpart, scrapbooking. “I don’t assemble pictures to commemorate anyone,” she told them, defiantly. “You think I’d be burgling for wavy little strips of ribbon?”

She put on her blue uniform in front of the mirror and buttoned her shirt right up to her throat. “I make collages because I like to rip things apart,” she said, “then glue them all down in a more radical configuration.”

Trapeze

Penelope Smart

Today I collapse time. I mark a crease down the middle of the day, make a fold, and crawl in. My thoughts strewn across the floor, I draw the blinds. Passing hours extend into branching limbs. I lie still, a breach of space.

I emerge a far-seer, draped in silk. A force of kindness, I am a girl who notices the beautiful and the good. I have answers and a sweet face.

I left the house only to test the strength of my own heart. To feel old ropes creak and sway under the weight of longing and snap in wind, like a hanging bridge. Peering over the edge of high expectation, a spotlight tore through the night sky. At the party, I watched my fingerprints fade into plush carpet.

These days I call upon the grace of trapeze artists and the council of windchimes. I grow ivy as a safety net of latticework shadows.

The way across is the simple curve of a calf muscle. My body, a bridge, is a mess of rigging and binding. Sun-splashed water waits below. I am not to look down, so I look up. You stand on the opposite side, laughing and waving.