from On Certainty

Regardless of appearance there is birth and there is death
There is being and non-being
Interior and exterior
Disrobing with one hand, shielding with the other my sex, after the first
               night with the Tyrant I woke to my body furred as a leopard
Giving rise to new gestures and abilities of violence
Around my right thigh, a garland of bees
So many things needed saying in the garden but it was plummeting and
               scorching
Whether we are human or animal, animal or machine, machine or
               information: all at once permeated with doubt 

               .

To run my hand once again over the Philosopher’s sentences
To hold to cold marble my flushed cheek

               .

On screen a woman walks through a museum in an advertisement for
               sepia washes, bleached-out fields of white evoking the spirit of
               Muybridge
The archive of Western art pillaged for virtual reality skins
The foundation of a photograph indistinguishable from its referent: the
               branded photograph of a hide marked with a cattle brand
Today I wear a body by Vermeer, round face, seashell ears with their
               attendant pearls garnered from Dutch colonial waters
And for my apartment: walls and windows gridded with Malevich’s Black
               Square
Wearing the self-portrait of Parmigianino I did not feel like
               Parmigianino, and wearing Courbet I did not feel like Courbet,
               but with Schiele I felt his self-portrait’s wracked body, organic
               twist
Stop playing games Phryne, the Tyrant said, returning the apartment
               back to the severe elegance of Augustan Third Style, and don’t
               think for a moment, he said, I’ll let you alone if you wear the
               body of a boy

               .

Now that summer is here there is little planting to be done
The walls when he leaves an undulating sea



Reprinted from On Certainty (Omnidawn, 2023) with the permission of the author.