Freedom & Prostitution
Cassandra Troyan navigates the histories of sex worker resistance and struggles against gendered violence and capital, towards revolution.
For Internation Sex Workers Day 2019, we publish an extract from Cassandra Troyan's Freedom & Prostitution. The writing moves through many landscapes, voices, characters, and motifs to demonstrate entrenched connections between histories of gendered violence, and the struggles against it. Whether it is militaristic, imperialist, or carceral in nature, the violence women face in sex work or their intimate relationships, are intrinsically linked by the force of capitalism and its capacity to shape and impoverish everyday life. Looking specifically at the case of Gary Ridgway, or the “Green River Killer” who murdered over 49 prostitutes during the 80s in the Pacific Northwest, and the response by sex workers, which influences and inspires the various moments of resistance embedded within the text.
Within this manuscript, the notion of freedom means liberation and autonomy. The dream of a world without work, without money, without gender, while imagining forms of survival now for those who often have little to no choices, or refuse to submit to the demands of tedious underpaid or unwaged labor, an abusive partner, or seek a life beyond work. Sex work is not a “better” type of labor, but a proposal for its abolition.
Rather than further marginalize sex workers by viewing their lives and deaths as either a site of titillation or disgust, Freedom & Prostitution looks at the freedom that sex work can allow, while addressing that the dangers sex workers face are not necessarily inherent to sex work, but to the violence of capital and the deeply ingrained misogyny and racism in the world today. The sex worker is not a person to be pitied, but another radical figure pursuing revolution through the collective movement of dissent, as a means of re-constructing another history, and hopefully a future with freedom for us all.
Conspiracy, dreadful word
full of ominous reverberations;
glimpses of closed doors
silently dispatched orders
evil intents.
Impossible, you say,
don’t let that right wing propaganda
con you.
That bullet that goes right
through your head
was planned for you and me
since the beginning of
capital’s time.
And that paycut,
so deep it went through
our pockets
tearing our pants apart,
is all in the logic of the system.
So beware of the
conspiracy theory of history.
No suspicion is fit for us,
brothers and sisters,
no stretching of the eyes
to read between the lines
or to follow a trail of blood
beneath our masters’ footsteps.
— Silvia Federici, In praise of conspiracy theory
V I
“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really
was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of
danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which
unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The
danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat
hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the
attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is
about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes
as the subduer of the Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning
the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not
be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be
victorious.”
— Walter Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History
Aileen Wuornos (February 29,1956—October 9, 2002), was a sex worker usually
referred to as the “first American female serial killer,” after she was convicted of
killing six men and sentenced to death for murder. Before her execution by lethal
injection, she refused to have an official public press conference. Instead, she
agreed to speak with Nick Broomfield, who was making his second documentary
about her life, trial, and the media spectacle monetizing her death. This would be
her last interview.
Nick Broomfield: But nonetheless.
Aileen Wuornos: Nobody ever asked me these questions.
Nick Broomfield: Whether the cops were following you or not
Aileen Wuornos: Whether the cops are following me or not, I mean what.
Nick Broomfield: Okay, so let’s say the cops were following you.
Aileen Wuornos: Yeah.
Nick Broomfield: Let’s say they were following you and they did everything that
you are saying they did.
Aileen Wuornos: Uh huh. Yeah.
Nick Broomfield: Nonetheless, you killed seven men.
Aileen Wuornos: Yeah, sure I did.
Nick Broomfield: And I am asking you what got you to kill the seven men.
Aileen Wuornos: And I am telling you because the cops let me keep killing them
Nick. Don’t you get it?
Nick Broomfield: Not everybody is killing seven people. So there must have
been something in you that was getting you to do that.
Aileen Wuornos: Oh, you are lost Nick!
Nick Broomfield: So explain.
Aileen Wuornos: I was a hitchhiking hooker.
Nick Broomfield: Right.
Aileen Wuornos: Running into trouble I’d shoot the guy if I ran into trouble,
physical trouble, the cops knew it. When the physical trouble came along, let her
– let her clean the streets. And then we will pull her in, that’s why.
Nick Broomfield: But how come there was so much physical trouble, because it
was all in one year, seven people in one year.
Aileen Wuornos: Oh well, oh well.
Nick Broomfield: But why not say now.
Aileen Wuornos: Because in retaliation for taking my life like this and getting
rich off it all these years, in – in total pathological lying. Yeah, thanks a lot. I lost
my fucking life because of it. Couldn’t even get a fair trial. Couldn’t even get a fair
investigation or nothing. Couldn’t even have my appeals right.
You sabotaged my ass, society. And the cops, and the system, a raped woman
got executed. It was used for books and movies and shit. Ladder climbs – reelections
and everything else; I got to put the finger in all your faces. Thanks a
lot. You are inhumane. You’re an inhumane bunch of fucking living bastards and
bitches and you’re gonna get your asses nuked in the end, and pretty soon it’s
coming. 2019 a rock’s supposed to hit you anyhow, you’re all gonna get nuked.
You don’t take fucking human life like this and just sabotage it and rip it apart like
Jesus on the cross, and say thanks a lot for all the fucking money I made off of
you and not care about a human being, and the truth being told. Now I know
what Jesus was going through.
I’ve been trying to tell the truth and I keep getting stepped on. Concerned about if
I was raped, if I – I am not giving you book and movie info. I’m giving you info for
investigations and stuff and that’s it.
We’re going to have to cut this interview, Nick. I’m not going to go into any more
detail. I’m leaving, I’m glad.
Thanks a lot society for railroading my ass.
For Aileen —
A flying stack of cash
commands the air
its body more material than yours
in the terrain below
the poor flagellating
themselves openly
in the fields
a secret misanthrope
vying for a tongue to share
lubricating this
arcane luxury
destitution is canny
How long have you been waiting for
the end
or for the light to return
your associations
With legs open to the window
you fuck the sun
you let it change you
you let yourselves be moved
to feel suddenly vibrant
in a space of inoculation
on another plane of recognition
Wherein the signifier of time fucks itself in the ass
again and again and begs to come as what before seemed to be a
relationship is now a difference in order.
When you asked him to speak his name he told you instead about power.
When he told you not to tell anyone about us you assumed what
he meant was the discourse of our relation. When you tried to
speak you realized you no longer had a tongue.
You were afraid of the signs because you already knew what they
meant, that to you, signaled a violence worse than death.
This violence on your body
You are told your symptoms prove
if she could only desire her freedom
then she’d be free
In the dream
face was sunburnt
presence unchanging
as was the landscape
wringing out a slowness that predicts disaster
You have only one idea so you hold onto it
in the dream though
you are allowed more than one
fantasy
In the dream
the soldier
moves
up and down
palms then elbows
then back again
on the desert floor
in this heat
imagine yourself open
not mysteriously
but by the weight
of a cold speculum
dilating
derailing
but not unpleasurable
evacuating cavities
a revelry of depletion
everything makes you wet
like after diagnosis
a declaration
of war
He says how much
he loves you that he will
never leave you
that you can never leave him
after he punches holes in the wall
tears the door off its hinges
throws you out of a moving car
and tells you
to find your way home
Later he comes back
down the same country road
he gets out of the car
and crawls in the dirt
crying at your feet
begging for you to forgive him
even though he says
this is all your fault
15
In the dream you killed him
you were in a Walmart
he threatened you
he had a knife
he held it to your throat
before he could finish
you moved him with
your tears
you embraced
arms around his neck
then just one
choking him
a telephone cord
wrapped around his throat
you straddle him
pinning his arms
pulling the wire taut
he apologizes
he does not struggle
as his eyes go dim
16
You get up from his body
you know this is for the best
and wander the store
for several hours
there is no egress
only the vast horizon
of ill compromise drying
your tongue
17
You go to the service desk
you are still crying
as you look at his dead body
lying on the ground unnoticed
you were sure it would be gone by now
vaporized
you are about to tell the clerk
at the counter about
his body
as you look on you see him move
his limbs stir freely
as if only set in a brief pause
you are struck by a wave
of mourning and relief
for his undead body
Will he still know you
since you have killed him
is your pact made stronger
will he ever forgive you
will the next time be worse
in this rift of heated cruelty
18
Survival, an illness that perpetuates
the correlation and comforts
between the bed and the tomb
like a framed golden glock
sheathed in the hull
of your body
To die tonight, to die in this bed—
19
The blade, the bed, or the sphere, which figure is guilty of hypnosis is unclear.
You respond as if you understand your ineloquence.
He asks if you’ve ever been a working girl.
You say you work
every day of your life
usually unpaid and when you are paid
you’re never really paid.
He says no, “a special friend,” “a naughty girl,” “a secret girlfriend,” “a playmate,”
“a dirty princess,” “a friend with benefits,” “a sensual lover,” “Daddy’s girl,”
“Daddy’s little girl,” “Daddy’s favorite girl,” or “a precious girl,” but if you are a
whore you can be anyone.
20
You are a girl even though his children are your age
His hands feel historical
you, a football
a tremble mass
a girl on his shoulders
The boys jeer at you
Yes we love her cum-stained teeth
Yes we love her droopy tits
He covers you in beer
he asks how much you love dick
21
He says you never put much effort into it, you never put much effort into your
crimes either. You don’t have much of a commodity out there. You are
overweight, you are beery, you never dress as a prostitute, you never wear
make-up, you wear cut-offs, sneakers, a camo t-shirt, a cap and glasses standing
on the side of the road. He says if you look at your hustle, you aren’t soliciting.
You would get in the car and engage the situation…you are running out of
options.
22
If you are a prostitute of the 21st century
metaphors are not enough
delusions
the girl who works
who is she,
always convincing
convincing in capital
You are the whore on his yacht
he asks you to shoot him up with heroin
and you comply
pay for all profitable demeanors
which means disposability
detracts your image from
all the decorating cameras
as “law does not ignore the bed”
23
To die tonight, to die in this bed—
24
The horror of a dead man’s tongue in your mouth
pieces of his cheek flesh slough off in ribbons
The participles nut chunks like taste buds
string cheese always a cheese
a most sour fermentation
The dead man loves how unbearable it is to open your mouth to his
How the decay comes rushing in
gagging you
He loves most that you must love it
you are paid to love it in all its grotesqueness
How good you are at it
How you revel in your ability
to eroticize abjection the greatest pleasures
delivered from the sickest chores
25
How in 30 minutes he will cum on your chest
and this will all be over
as you are left in a luxury hotel suite
stack of cash on the bedside table
How the rest of the day is yours
and tomorrow
and the day after that
in your sudden freedom
How you make it rain
and roll around on the bed
the scent of fresh currency
as blue green gold reflects
against your skin
in the fading daylight
26
Or the days when it is too much
you are almost crying
you are holding back tears
as you fantasize about his death
to get you through
to get him off
to get you off
and remember
that you can do almost anything
for an hour
You are holding back tears but you do not regret this
You do not want to be saved
You want the end of work not the end of sex
As one woman’s death is another’s survival
27
Fucking means nothing until you reside in its absence
refuse its meaning, religiously
Scoring it, calcifying its lack
Get beaten for it
Drugged for it
Paid for it
Make a life of it
You hate no woman who has found herself in the hustle
discovered talent in the slime
dealing, stripping, fucking
constantly redefining the bottom of everything
“Thus, I am leaving you to your own devices on this bed. I am going out, and
once again I will write on the door so that, as you exit, you may perhaps recall
the dreams you will have pursued on this bed.”
28
Fantasies of harm and the form it gives to desire—you question this. To drink
from deleterious power and ask what can you make of me, this wreckage of
attachment? Which pieces of your body reject the rest of your body? How is your
body in conflict with your own politics? To stage a total revolt, completely
unimpressed by social barbarity.
The body that eats its body
The body that protects the body with a shimmering bark
The body that grows hooves now
The body that cries out
The body that refuses to die
29
You got cancer
You became sick
You killed yourself
You quit drinking
You became a hermit
You became a leper
You had both your breasts removed
You had your reproductive organs removed
You became a junkie
You became homeless
You started using
You quit using
You turned to the streets
You became a prostitute
You became a student
You declared bankruptcy
You blamed yourself
You became a mother
You became a widow
You became an orphan
You became a criminal
You became a prisoner
You became a fantasy
30
Your body under the body of the dead man
You imagine he is a giant spider
liquefying your vitality and sucking it from you
You tie him to the bed and tell him he can’t touch you
but you ride his face instead
his moustache
a spider that you erase your cunt with
scratching it out
thrust by thrust
in these moments when you love it
for the love of fucking and
for getting paid
the lightness you feel
in this unremorseful joy
is the finest scam
anyone can ever commit
it is with this feeling
that you go out into the night
looking for a place to sleep
for food for a fix
or a flying stack of cash
that he says flows from your pussy
draining his bank account
and his cum
31
You laugh and in the background the chorus of sex workers calls out to say:
To fuck is to win / the joke’s on him
When the dead man tells you meeting you is the best thing that has ever
happened to him and he means it. The horror and tenderness you feel are not a
contradiction but the culmination of a life’s work.
“The presumption that she is a whore is a metaphysical presumption: a
presumption that underlies the system of reality in which she lives. A whore
cannot be raped, only used. A whore by nature cannot be forced to whore—only
revealed through circumstance to be the whore she is.”
She wants you to believe this. She keeps repeating herself as she tries to pull
you from the lure of the chorus.
Every story is the same because it is not / you sought the cause and lost the plot
You took away a heft of generalities, yet you learned nothing, you broke nothing
as your body ached transference. Your body releasing you from your hatred,
your nature, your inability to complete the task both reaffirming and releasing in
its pleasurable rejection as in the end, the joke’s still on him.
32
“The whore has a nature that chooses prostitution. She should be punished for
her nature, which determines her choice and which exists independent of any
social or economic necessity.”
You believe women were made to be punished, but there is no such thing as a
woman—it can only be assumed, the limits of violence held within this category,
woman.
The terror of being blamed for this violence, when it goes beyond the typical
assumptions of “asking for it.” When it is seen as a fetish, a proclivity, a
pathological trait marked in your nature. You cannot save a whore from herself,
you can only see that she recuperates and fulfills the patterns graphed onto her,
regardless of what she says.
The destruction of a body. A white body. A brown body. A black body. A body
reconstituting its own glue, its own insatiable labors in a contract with foes that
holds you beyond choice. Afterwards you discover your mistake, as you believed
you were a woman but you were actually the spider all along—and in this—is a
type of freedom.
33
And with your many legs, and fangs, and fantasies of entrapment, and wetness,
and poise, and voices, and eyes, you go out with the chorus into the night and
cut the stillness with your laughter and fulfill your daily practice—
When you call her a cab
When you draw her a bath
When you wipe away the blood
When you let her sleep at your place
When you pour her a drink
When you get her out of her house
When you bring her food in bed
When you hold her close
When you take her somewhere safe
When you clean out the minibar on the dead man’s tab
When you sit after with the others and wait to repeat
Freedom means to win / Freedom, a life to claim and live again
34
It was like any other session. You had screened him and everything looked fine,
you saw proof he was a union plumber. He called you when he got to the hotel
lobby and you told him the room number. A few minutes later a knock on the
door and you let him in. He knew to put the envelope on the table without you
asking him and then he excused himself to use the restroom. To you he read as
naturally submissive—eyes downcast, soft voice, a meek grin—when he came
out of the bathroom though, something felt off.
You tell him to get on all fours and while your heel is planted on his shoulder he
reaches and tries to grab you. You kick him on the side of his head, rolling him
over onto his back, dropping a knee to his chest. He just starts laughing.
You ask him what’s funny as you slap his face and he reaches for his wallet and
pulls out a badge and tells you you’re under arrest. You say for what. He says
prostitution. You say you’re not a prostitute and he says you are now.
You laugh in his face, he hits you.
You spit in his face, he pulls out his gun.
He holds it to your head, you have no choice.
“Bitches like you die everyday.”
35
When he raped you, you were not at work. While he held you down and fucked
you, you said ”stop” and “no” and used your safe word but he didn’t stop.
Afterward you felt numb.
You went to work the following day, and then the next day.
And then the day after that, you think.
You can’t remember.
When you finally talk to him about it he says he doesn’t remember, he calls you
dramatic, he calls you a liar, he calls you abusive.
36
You’re in a BMW with a lawyer and he puts his iguana tongue in your mouth and
it tastes like mothballs, martini, cheese, and you think you will not survive this
moment and then you do.
It happens, it has happened. It passes. You want to cry, you are almost laughing
and then you are wet. The lawyer takes out a tit and flops it around. He makes
small wheezing noises as he rubs your pussy outside your panties. He wants the
man on the street to see you. You feel shame not because he is a man but
because he is a laborer and you are white and he is brown. He is going to the
tortilla factory where the other workers will gather at 4 am until they roll open the
metal door.
You remember this feeling that a second ago felt so foreign even though you
have encountered it thousands of times. It is evasive, the dread lurching up.
What’s the difference between this encounter and another? What keeps you from
fear? What keeps you alive? You feel no malice as you cum so hard with his
fingers in your ass and you imagine a giant stack of cash spilling out of your
chest—you take it up and toss it into the air.
37
The stack, instead of falling apart
and slipping into singles
it takes flight
the movement of paper wings
gives rise
to a sublime sensation
of never having to think of money again
flying into the horizon
until it is a mirage
a fable
vanishing into history
38
You keep this fantasy close to you
It warms you when it is difficult to move forward
When you worked the streets
and hoped for the best
because you didn’t have
any other options
You learned in the Paris Metro
that if you looked at men very directly
they would follow you to buy a room
this turned out to be much safer
In your attempts to survive
a client says
you’re industrious and you say no,
Full war
for the sex workers against work
39
The chorus of sex workers joins in to say:
Every time we fuck we are saying we will not punch a clock.
Every time we fuck our body belongs to us even if we’re paid.
Every time we fuck we win.
Every time ends this garbage testimony that bleeds us—
The trick of every public face
Every media image
Every death, a statistic
Every execution, a spectacle
A list of names on a wall without faces
Instead, the work of sabotage
Espionage
Every smile, a cover-up
Every kiss, in collusion
Every girlfriend, a sleeper
We say tonight is a great night to refuse death in the veils of power
40
You look at your face, the new version of your face after you almost died. You
still do no recognize this face. Your mouth shaped differently by the loss of so
many teeth, the taste of your blood as you hear him scream.
You do not remember the first blows.
He says, “That is my pussy, and I'm going to take it back now."
You say you need help, that you need to go to the hospital.
He says, “They can’t help you,” as he throws a dirty blanket over you and you
refuse to die.
41
Images of your brutalized body and face circle online. They are displayed so
there can be no doubt left in anyone’s minds, regardless if you deserved or
provoked it, you are both victim and evidence of this violence. This is what the
burden of proof requires—to be closest to truth is to be almost dead.
42
To be brutalized
To be beaten
To be gagged
To be strangled
To be left for dead
To be held at gunpoint
To be assaulted
To be stabbed
To be raped
To be choked
To be drowned
To be poisoned
To be starved
To be tortured
To be enslaved
To be imprisoned
To be shamed
To be made hungry
To be sterilized
To be impoverished
To be kidnapped
To be erased
To be refused
To be hunted
To be murdered
To be eaten
To be skinned
To be dismembered
To be mutilated
To be buried
To be decapitated
43
You went around to ask everyone
if they heard of
the girl found in the lake with cinder blocks
tied to her
arms and legs
no one had
You think of this horror
how you could die in the same way
how no one would ever know
or only
a societal phenomenon
a small familial tragedy
to say their names
44
To say their names
and refuse his
You don’t want to say the soldier’s name
you’ll do anything to keep his name
out of your mouth
the name of every murderer
made a public fascination
a site of obsession that reverberates
greater than the memory of the dead
“the green river killer” striking like a mythic monster
he said he killed you
because God told him to
he said you were evil
you deserved to die
he said you were easy to kill
because everyone already
expected you to die
45
Wendy Lee Coffield
Gisele Ann Lovvorn
Debra Lynn Bonner
Marcia Fay Chapman
Cynthia Jean Hinds
Opal Charmaine Mills
Terry Rene Milligan
Mary Bridget Meehan
Debra Lorraine Estes
Linda Jane Rule
Denise Darcel Bush
Shawnda Leea Summers
Shirley Marie Sherrill
Rebecca “Becky” Marrero
Colleen Renee Brockman
Sandra Denise Major
Alma Ann Smith
Delores LaVerne Williams
Gail Lynn Mathews
Andrea M. Childers
Sandra Kay Gabbert
Kimi-Kai Pitsor
Marie M. Malvar
Carol Ann Christensen
46
Martina Theresa Authorlee
Cheryl Lee Wims
Yvonne “Shelly” Antosh
Carrie Ann Rois
Constance Elizabeth Naon
Kelly Marie Ware
Tina Marie Thompson
April Dawn Buttram
Debbie May Abernathy
Tracy Ann Winston
Maureen Sue Feeney
Mary Sue Bello
Pammy Annette Avent
Delise Louise Plager
Kimberly L. Nelson
Lisa Yates
Mary Exzetta West
Cindy Anne Smith
Patricia Michelle Barczak
Roberta Joseph Hayes
Marta Reeves
Patricia Yellowrobe
Unidentified White Female (Jane Doe B-10)
Unidentified White Female (Jane Doe B-17)
Unidentified Female (Jane Doe B-20)
47
An aporia in time—
To be killed without the dignity of death
a void marked where death belongs
a suspension
bracketed by calculating
the difference between
disappearance and discovery
But still, the deaths outside of time
without a body
or less than a body
less than human
deaths only known by those who kill
made a victim
so they cannot be forgotten
The women known and unknown
To mourn the dead
To say more than their names
48
Wendy Lee Coffield, 16, disappeared July 8, 1982. Your body was on found
July 15, 1982. When they found you in the river your jeans were tied around your
neck, strangling you. You were a dropout and runaway, you were often
hitchhiking. Your mother said, "I know that was the kind of life she chose for
herself, we taught her the best we could." Your mother said you were a good girl
in the countryside and the trouble only began when you moved to the city, when
she had to support you both. Sometimes you lived in a tent during the summer,
you gathering blackberries to sell at the side of the road so you could buy food. In
pictures, you had a wide smile spread across your open face.
49
Gisele Ann Lovvorn, 17, disappeared July 17, 1982. Your body was found on
September 25 (26?), 1982 near abandoned houses south of Sea-Tac airport. A
pair of men’s black socks were tightly tied around your neck. You grew up happy
in California but started to runaway when you were 14 as you felt alone and
isolated where you lived. You loved the Grateful Dead and followed them around
the country to hear them play. You met your boyfriend on the road in
Washington, he was a taxi driver and much older than you. You lived together in
a small apartment and turned to street prostitution to bail him out of jail for theft.
Your family didn’t know what you were doing and were waiting for you to come
home. You had long thick blonde hair and the bluest eyes.
50
Debra Lynn Bonner, 23, disappeared July 25, 1982. Your body was found on
August 12, 1982 floating in the river near the Kent slaughterhouse. Your mother
Shirley sits at her kitchen table looking through photo albums filled with pictures
from your childhood. Your mother said, “I love her with all my heart and I just
wish to God she was alive and here.” The last time she saw you was summer of
1982. “I couldn’t believe it. I really couldn’t believe it and it just seemed like it just
seems like I was empty, like my whole body was empty.” All your friends loved
you, they said you were so beautiful. After you dropped out of high school you
met your boyfriend who would later be your pimp. You traveled around, got
arrested, lived in motels, but you still called your mother once or twice a week.
51
Marcia Fay Chapman, 31, disappeared August 1, 1982 and your body was
found on August 15, 1982. When you left the apartment, you told your three
children you were going to the store and then never came back. You mother said
something like this had never happened. At 5’ 2” and a hundred pounds your
neighbors at the apartment complex called you “Tiny.” Your neighbors described
you “as cheerful, outgoing and someone who could take care of herself”, “she
was a nice girl.” In the articles after your death none of them say that you are
black. You had been arrested for prostitution 2 months before on the Pacific
Highway South where you usually worked. You started at around 5 pm and
would work through the night. You dressed casually, in a hat, jeans, and t-shirt.
You never worked for a pimp, you said “why should I give the money to a
man?...I need it for my kids, not for some man.”
52
Cynthia Jean Hinds, 17, disappeared August 11, 1982. Your body was found
August 15, 1982 in the river by man who was collecting bottles and saw you held
down under a pile of rocks. Your father, Robert, last saw you working as a cook
at a South Seattle barbeque restaurant the day before you went missing. Your
mother, Marilyn, said she knew you worked as a prostitute for three years after
you got caught up with the wrong crowd and dropped out of Nathan Hale High
School in North Seattle, although your father denied it. You sang in bars in King
County and at community dances. After your death, your only recorded and
original song, "Let's Fall In Love Again," was discovered and released by Fantasy
Records in 1987.
“You once told me love would last forever
You also said forever you'd be mine
We got something special
Don't let it slip away
'Cause love like ours is just too hard to find
Baby, (Oh baby) let's fall in love again
Like we did the first time
Baby, (Sweet baby) let's fall in love again
But this time never say goodbye”
Your younger brother Terry said, “she still was a human being and she still had
family that cared and loved her just like all the other ones had family that cared
and loved them. And my sister she was a sweet person, a caring person and she
was loved by a lot of people. After knowing she was dead, my life was just full of
pain and my whole life just went down hill.”
53
Mary Sue Bello, 25, disappeared Oct. 11, 1983. Your remains were found Oct.
12, 1984. Growing up you believed your mother was your older sister, and your
grandparents were your parents. Your mother was only 15 when she had you.
When you found out you never forgave her for lying to you. She thought it would
be better to raise you like this, instead of giving you up for adoption. Your mother
had been adopted. When she found out she was adopted, she never forgave her
parents for hiding it from her. They said they wanted to protect her from the
horrific details of her past. Her birth mother left her siblings alone and her brother
died in a fire, but her twin sister survived. Her birth parents divorced and her birth
mother went to Alaska and left her in a boarding house alone. It was 3 days until
they found her, she was only 6 months old. You wanted to know where your
father was, who he was. When you finally met your father after he got out of
prison, he tried to rape you. You realized then you never had a father. Your
mother pleaded with you to stop prostituting yourself, but you insisted, this was
the way you had to make money, you had no other options. The last time your
mother saw you she said she had a feeling of dread as you she saw you leave
your trailer for the bus stop. She said, “the punishment for prostitution should not
be death.”
54
Opal Charmaine Mills, 16, disappeared Aug. 12, 1982. Your body was found
August 15, 1982. Chubby cheeks, sweet girl, innocent, strong-willed, kind,
charismatic. How many deaths do these women die, what does it mean if you
died loved, if you died cherished. If your family mourned your loss, if your father
drank himself to death after. It’s a kind of terror to repeat these fragments, the
residue of a life that circles around itself. The violence of your father’s rage—how
he’d beat your brother, lock the cabinets and refrigerator because he thought you
both ate too much, still you covered the refrigerator with drawings commanding
you to be thin, to have a flat stomach. To be abandoned by your family, when
they give up because their family gave up on them. Generations of trauma. You
were named after your father’s sister who was murdered in Oakland. He never
stopped blaming himself, your brother never stopped blaming himself for your
death.
55
Mary Bridget Meehan, 18, disappeared Sept. 15, 1982. Your body wasn’t found
until November 13, 1983 in a shallow grave a few blocks from the Red Lion
Motel. You were 8 months pregnant. Brilliant young woman, so intelligent and
sensitive, a genius, they said. Try to understand what went wrong. To be
abandoned by your family, thrown out, the door locked and your key no longer
works. They beg you to come home but only on their terms. You had two
miscarriages as a young teen. You think about your life as a distant dream, to
speak only about what you could never do, to let the impossibility of the future be
what makes you believe in life but what also keeps you from it. Victim of the
times, of drugs, of too much dreaming, they said. Your life is not separate from
your death. It could have been you, it is you. Your death is not a tragic spectacle,
instead it is a reality, you die together.
56
Debra Lorraine Estes, 15, disappeared Sept. 20, 1982. Your body was found
May 30, 1988. Then to die with you, to die in this ditch, to die strangled in the
woods, is not histrionics it is embodied mourning that marks each of you as
singular even in your similarities, in your joy and pain. What it means to travel
alone, to turn to a life on the streets. What it means to be white and pretty. What
it means to be black and pretty but have less options, less sympathy from the
cops, from pimps, from johns, from murderers. What it means when your life is
worth less. What it means when your mother leaves your abusive father, but
must move from man to man to man when she cannot earn enough on her own
to support the both of you. What it means when you don’t trust men but depend
on them to live. What it means when your boyfriend pimps you out, when you
think this is love. What it means when no one can protect you, when no one can
save you but yourself.
57
Linda Jane Rule, 16, disappeared Sept. 26, 1982. Your remains were found
January 31, 1983. Remains, not a body. The difference between what makes up
a body and what is not enough to make a body. The media called it “a dump
site,” the police called it a “body site.” The fragments of you at a body site, mixing
with the evidence of a crime. “fibers, hair, rocks, paint chips, twigs, loose finger
and toenails, bits of bone, rotted pieces of cloth, fragments of cheap jewelry, tiny
slips of paper, a cigarette, photos and moulages of tire tracks, a condom.” Your
blonde hair, your smile, your rosy cheeks, your tear-stained cheeks, your blue
eyes, your green eyes, your brown eyes, your tired eyes, your crying eyes, your
buxom chest, your willowy limbs, your petite frame. Only a collection of bones in
a ditch next to the highway is found. He didn’t bother to dig a grave. As the
seasons go by, your body builds its own grave, sinking deeper into the ground as
the earth covers you. To die tonight—to die in this bed.
58
As you repeat these names
you know it is not enough
memory is not enough
To mourn your dead
To say the names
You continue
with every trick turned, a triumph
in recognition and refusal
to die alone
in your bed
in your streets
Yet to know that you will be punished
for your survival
To be killed for your own defense
as a prostitute is either redeemed
murdered or murders
Criminal, victim, or hero—
who is the monster now?
59
It is no mistake that Aileen Wuornos had to die. Insane, sexually abused,
abandoned, raped, crude, traumatized, a dyke, ugly, unhinged, mentally
unsound, debased by incest and poverty. Your life and your death, a spectacle to
be consumed. After your death a beautiful actress performs a caricature of you.
They praise her for how ugly she has become, they call it art and give her an
award.
Charlize Theron: ‘No, I had to get to a place of understanding. When I was
playing her, I always used to say to Patty, ‘God, if only she didn't do this one
thing. How would her life have turned out?’ It's a very emotional place to be. I
read the story and immediately related and responded to that. That wasn't tough
for me. It wasn't like I was reading this very distant thing that I couldn't
understand at all. She was a normal human being that had gone through a lot of
heartache. I related to that on a different level. I think you have to get to a place
where the best you can do is understand—maybe—why, and then really drag
yourself through it, because it's tough to do those things. The last killing, it was
impossible. It was one of the worst nights of my life…We all might go through
rough spots in our lives. [But for her] there was never a break, and half of it is not
even in the movie because you just don't have enough time. The fact is there are
so many times that she really did try to change her life. That was the one thing
that I really loved about her—that she wasn't the kind of person who sat back and
went, ‘Well, I'm a prostitute and this is my life.’ She tried to join the army! And
they wouldn't take her because she was deaf in one ear, because she had been
beaten so badly.’ ”
Right before they executed you your last words were, “I’ll be back, I’ll be back”
60
You don’t leave the bed
You don’t go off
you don’t take for
granted
you try to come to terms with your suffering as
punishment and tool against you
you take the heart out
you try to leave
you take up a passage
you try to test the value
you fail through the force of fallow vision
you’re told it’s all your fault
you don’t know the stakes
your stupidity
your exhaustion
working wilting
you writhe this one out
61
A flying stack of cash
breeding fantasies of
freedom and domination
corresponding to the guilt allayed
in this seduction the cause
and response of your femininity
You feel stupid, you’re to blame
the kinds of games women
persecute themselves with
the kinds of scenes they
cannot leave
62
From the bed you can see him
desert tan tactical boots
his hair stiff with dust
a skull stretched across his face
flying at 120 knots a door gunner
with a M-240H machine gun
on a UH-60 helicopter
scanning the landscape
at 50 to 5,000 feet
the village is a plane of coordinates
navigable through erasure
63
The sequence is maligned
a child bends out the window
a glass is slipped across the table
and you are caught
in this familiar architecture
a colonial romance
A fake heartbreak that leads
to a real heart
the limits of genuine risk
and the bodies you will
hold close
on fractured overpasses
and broken buildings
64
Traditions of violence
ricochet
from your body
to the images of every village
every bedroom
he took from behind a gun
a first glimpse of seduction
in the courting
you become closer
unimaginable
every time you look at him
you think of everyone
he’s killed
long beard his clothes
how easily he passes
without a uniform
the ways of a traitor
an imperial position
calling this chimera
chest coated in cash
making it rain
counting down the nights
at the club
until you can finally leave him
65
Every soldier, a john
Every husband, a dead man
This world must disappear without
tragedy or irony
fantasy not a threat
but a conceptualizing force
builds the possibility of wrecking
for and against itself
Like the flight of a helicopter
levity a contradiction
in form
66
You try to destroy the bed
but the grave
still a better promise
when the struggle is
daily life
every act of resistance
homed in monuments
crystals
fallen to minerals
in a current
of dishonesty
unrecognizable
shredded down
questioned down
to the practice of forever
in between
the margins
67
What it means to reside there
survive there
attempt to thrive
in an impossible history
where death
is the softest alcove
and love the imminent heart
of a heartless world
or is that what
makes it transgressive
68
The dead man is not finished with you yet
you could see him before
he even arrived.
He comes back after his first deployment and goes to your parents’ house to look
for you but you were already gone. Your sister answered the door to say you
didn’t live there anymore.
69
Euthanasia
a solitude
meditating at a bay-window
holding a shit-varnished template
placate the skin
tear back the flesh
into a gender of mourning
You wish you could never see him again
You wish he had never found you
70
Crying on a platform
like it’s mid-century
you’ve got a handkerchief to prove
nothing gets better with time
your hands are still freezing
you’ve killed yourself
a thousand times in this city
you’ve prayed without sound
you couldn’t believe
when you opened your eyes
your hands at your chest
the reluctance of loneliness
catastrophe without break
no angels in the hallway
no messianic luxury
71
You walk up a gilded staircase surrounded by a thousand mirrors
no reflection all wreckage and warnings
“bitches get what they deserve”
You go to a room and the soldier opens the door, he lets you in he kisses
you and asks why you’ve kept him waiting. He doesn’t wait for an answer.
He grabs you, undresses you as he pulls you to the bathroom.
You struggle but he squeezes your throat
lifts you up against the wall by your neck.
The room goes black as he tightens his grip.
You don’t remember where you are or how long you’ve been out.
You wake up to him standing above you, pissing on you.
Smiling, he looks down and says “good morning sweetheart”
72
You ask him if you’re going to die
he says
“I’m going backwards in time
lifting at 3 am
watching the sun come up
waiting for when
we meet again
on the other side of war”
73
“Death reopens a channel to the past”
he says,
“when you almost die
you don’t cry for humanity
or yourself”
no grievances
no tears
candle wax melodies
playing in the background
74
He says
a real man is
the terror in the landscape
both local and sublime.
He says he’s come across
so many mass graves
a dozen more
a dozen less
but there is no measurement
for the cruelty of a terrain
He says “even in a civil war
there are many sides”
75
He drags you by your hair
from the bathroom to the bedroom
you scream
he kicks you and tells you not to resist
he throws you on the bed
he climbs on top of you
he says, “I don’t want to fuck you just yet”
He starts to choke you again
the weight of his body pressing you down
into the bed
he throws a pillow on your face
he starts to smother you
under this pressure you begin to cry
your sobbing shakes your whole body
until his fucking takes over
and you wait for him to finish
leaving you relieved and shivering
76
He picks you up
He holds you and tells you not to cry
To die tonight, to die in this bed—
77
The cruelty of compulsion
you think you might puke
in your attempt to find a language
without boundaries
you’re speaking like any other dead girl
waiting for the sunset
a small spiritual contract
in this coercive forever
you looked for slight entrances
but were never relieved
the force of biology
and amorous terror
you ask
what kills a man
what breaks him
78
Abolish this encounter
marking you as
disposable
instead your resilience
a threat
God guns goals in the
face of immanent cause
reflecting this sensitive beauty
a human diction
holding you up by the chest
until your tits rip off
and you’re never forced to be
a woman again
79
He called the summer a vision
a fulfillment of orders
the men kept returning to the house
each time they would drive up to it
a shade of fog
grew belly first
crowded in
the driveway
relapsing
a ceaseless diversion
You make the necessary arrangements
set the signals
the details
decoys and wait
80
You refuse the dream but it returns to you
there are only singularities
clinging with a volatile touch
the scene of his appearance
revealed
an obsession with recognition
recoiling
for affirmation
a kiss
a night alone in a house
in a field
all that land
to be lost to
81
In bed you wake up in his arms
and roll over to slit his throat
and watch as the blood soaks the sheets
To die tonight, to die in this bed—
82
A real man
there is only one
and for him
that is the only light
left to bear
To create what breaks you
when you left the bed
took all his guns
burned down his house
and he never had to be
a man again
83
But you are like most women
unafraid of the truth
when every night an insect is your father
the entire world an electrical current
strange how it’s only a glimpse
the weight of holding all the rage
that no one else can be bothered to carry
84
A civic duty
this work of love
to be abased by it
the particularities of refusal
the kindness of its loss
and your freedom in its destruction
The chorus arrives and you are on the move again
no longer afraid
85
When the world is an illusion
constructed by the state
a diabolical resolution
you cannot believe that
the war will soon be over
to surrender to
an ideology of hunger
to walk down the street
and not feel shame
strength in the fortune plea—
You can’t do that to me anymore
I’m not afraid of you
To want to be something other
than your life now
86
But to wait for the end that
never comes
never disintegrates
lesser methods of choosing
peace over retribution
silence over pain
when your survival
is the greatest revenge
87
Dividends disasters and other
unraging signs of your over-determination
your inability to see a variety of signs
patterns calling out our errors
to only recognize figures
you are told are like your own
to see yourself
in the distance
a subject
presented untroubled
a closure that stops you
before you begin
88
Until inexplicably
the world opens again
In the dream there is an arena
the crowd pours
an exhaustion ripping past
all injuries
dressing perilous
reportage
there is only one voice
no excuses
no attempts to push back
this stupid swallowing
weapons being distributed
both hand-made and stolen
blood soaks the AstroTurf
below is the earth
and is split open
but is down there
and you are up on the hillside
patrolling through
weeds marshes trenches
knee-deep in a
clotted muck
89
when you look down you see
the mud is clotting
you try to run but
fouled blood stops you
below is the earth
your teeth
are bleeding but
below is the earth
below is the earth
in the night
the night your death was glorious
the night you looked into the mirror
cut lines into faces against your parents
the night you couldn’t fake it anymore
against appropriation
against decorous resolution
90
Poet laureate of the insurrection
communiqué
against a tie man pressing boobies
cutting flesh taking water source
flushing tactile
police batons erotic tenderizers
synthesize ethics of
chewed up love laws
from the food bank to robbing banks
take this unchurned bomb and
set it free
paint the walls with your blood
violence is not what you do
it is the betrayal you depart from
a nightshade talisman
calling in your debts
91
This is what you call gratitude
and all coarse affections
pantomiming your deaths
Do you want more or do you take more?
This isn’t destiny or
some higher resolution
the smell of an orchard after dawn
a pastoral deflection
you can’t let yourself recognize
like the pavilions you’ve backed into
through the labor of time
the machines on your back
mirroring every symbolic
scene of progress
your abjection
92
the whip the cross the field the bed
form greater bonds
by what they deny not extend
tokens of discipline
blasphemy terror remorse
and grief for all difference unnamed
93
Tarring & Feathering
Drawing & Quartering
Water-boarding
Electrocution
Poisoning
Decapitation
Disembowelment
Lethal Injection
Firing Squad
Torturing
Hanging
Suffocation
Strangulation
Flagellation
Asphyxiation
Drowning
Crucifixion
Burning
Branding
Garroting
Gibbeting
94
Impaling
Pendulum
Sawing
Scaphism
Starvation
Stoning
Boiling
Castration
Combing
Crushing
Flaying
Sawing
Scalping
Torturing by rats
Devouring by animals
Trampling by horses
Crushing by elephants
Blowing from a gun
Breaking Wheel
Burying Alive
95
The individual tortured body
and the collective body tortured
the future is removal
and a new orifice for every body
every body an orifice
every body a hole of disconsolation
96
A transition is a war
at the center of loneliness
that fear cannot hold
to ask what is your greatest forgiveness
the unjustifiable cause that suffers
this separation
exhaustion at every hour of the day
a different prose
97
Which world was this? The frame or its erasure?
When all attachments feel lethal
this dull opulence
is a cold seduction of remission
The old world and its codes
its blood sighs and its fractures
accentuating this aberration
called home
you knew you could make a new one
and be better still
98
The materiality of this world.
You could not describe its objects but the processes were now more palpable,
articulated with seductive clarity.
A sensuality. A voluptuous congress accentuating every tongue. When
everything you do is public, with no life to go to after the day—no togetherness
postponed, a temporary in situ for the shuddering forms of a body in practice.
99
You travel mostly at night or dawn
sometimes in groups of 200 or more
through the underbrush, through sewers and forests
and garbage and ditches
close to the ground where it is difficult
to move but small enough
to be protected by the rough chaparral
or barbed wire
lookouts circling overhead
Dramatic feeding
with buoyancy and grace
extirpation
how did you imagine
to be any different
on the executioner’s block
every whore gets what she is asking for
100
You are carried
until you learn to walk again
bringing your mother animals
and placing them in her mouth
surrounding her with flowers
not funereal
but to feed this enclosure
she cannot leave
the tender and innocent heart
of all systems of power
find new comforts
outside the symbolic
101
You try to drink
but the glass of water is almost too large
and too heavy to reach your mouth
you lift it quickly
so you can hold it before it slips
from your grip
while trying not to spill
or smash the glass
This is the fantasy of opposites—
how to live in the world
with those you don’t trust
102
You forgot how to write
the pen keeps falling out of your hand
or your grip is too strong
and it snaps the pen in two
or your script is so sharp
you rip the page and by the time
you’re finished there is no page left
This is a theory of antagonisms—
how to have the same conversation for the next
10, 20, 200 years
how to be the only one to say
we’ve been here before
in a meaningful way
103
You wake up and someone else is dead
you saw your sister die
you saw your mother die
when you say goodbye
it makes death real
Walking down the street
lights up
it’s midnight
no cars no rain
no tears
104
You blinked again and again
but you couldn’t clear your vision
you were separated from the others
you called out shrilly
and were answered
You slip away while
enemies argue
amongst themselves
ghosts of the plains
stabbing at internal organs
or chasing down on foot
105
A telephone rings
You answer it and a woman’s voice tells you
“I can’t leave if I don’t break
with the enemies that I’ve
unmasked”
You hang up the phone and walk across the street
to a boarded up liquor store
above it is an apartment building
with blown out windows
you climb the fire escape ladder
to the top floor and crawl inside
to shed your fear
106
The room is full of women
some from the chorus
some from old families
the street
other cities
You open your mouths to each other
sloshing a venom
trickling in
You say the erotic is a kind
of undeniable present and
you can’t wait any longer
you untie all the shoes
you lick every sole
you make yourself available
and open
you talk and laugh
planning discussing
some in a corner of the room
fucking in the sun
but not separate
as they add to the conversation
This is the reality of participation—
how to be separate but not a spectacle
how to be included but not a spectacle of appearance
107
You feel the threat of narrative
the weight of bodies
the not that holds your
ecstatic refusal
held by a stress unbearable
an anxiety produced in waiting
resonant querulous reports
small family groups
scuttling soft vocalization
WHERE are YOU?
108
Predatory and potent
as erotic assimilations
stack in the sky
feeding in the air
watching the forests below
others are nearby at different levels of interaction—
sometimes enemies sometimes friends or
both
You call out
in love or distress
sounds resemble the cities
that used to exist
the names of the dead
how to articulate
this history that will be
through the past undone
109
Dramatically you strike
from the sky
and no longer fear repression
generally quiet
remain undetected until your shadows
flood the water
until you are overcome
with this feeling of
when you were
the most alone
revenge rises up in the back
of your throat
entices dissimilarities
in the dark
unloved
obliterate the signal
to no longer refuse the truth
because of its power to destroy
like any good hunter
a disrespectful scavenger
a thief suspended in prolonged soaring
110
Bodies become one body
sinks down to a radical emptiness
you learn configurations
use your force with others
in a skillful balance
of resistance and capture
how to destabilize
you never put it to use
against each other
to hold a tender
suspension of violence
compelling meaning
this is your training
this is your resilience
111
You place your body
on other bodies
they are full of erotic potential
redirected rather than ignored
How to build without producing
each day another set of obstacles
linked into commonality
a pleasure shared
to never be alone again
to cross it all out
112
One by one records of actions compile into another larger body, a tactile
expanding body that communicates beyond and without and in this unwieldy
shifting mass, a joy not unlike revenge, fills you with possibility. You continue to
work, not out of habit, but to take up this joy from within, an immersive tactic.
113
Passing coins of spit
the sex of exchange
that aligns you
in this otherwise random coupling
a momentary release sugar slip
He tells you to get up off the bed
and undress more slowly this time
while looking at him in the eyes
You bend over
and the world’s upside down
your ass in the sun
your ass is the sun
a currency of light
that refracts at the last moment
and you watch his face
unfold as he comes
and it drips to the floor
114
You pick up his face
and try it on
sticky sensations turn to
a formal and pleasing
response
and you open his mouth
to breathe in your air
to win against the memory of
that one time you almost died
in the Trump Hotel
as a man was laughing laughing
laughing above you
and you could feel yourself
fading until
there is a faint scratching
coming from outside
bristling millions of follicles
crumbling the world slowly eating itself
hooves scales cut the shell tear the sac
hooks dragging
rotten eggs rotten eggs
and you knew the chorus
was on their way
115
You create a ceremony
you sit in a room facing forward
making small sounds
since you cannot look at anyone
you are permitted to cry
weeping bodies make a rustling that begins
slowly gaining in heat and friction
the entire building vibrating
shifting in landscapes
territories continents
until the dead are here
116
This is not a fantasy
you are in the room with the dead
you raise the dead
from the deserts
from the mass graves
from the shallow graves
from the oceans
from the rivers
from the lakes
from the sewers
from the city dumps
from the forests
from the ditches
“Out of the grave
and into the streets!”
117
You gather with tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands then you lose
count as they try to smash you all smear you against glass ground you into the
street you move your broken limbs and continue on as your individual body is
unheroic, unassuming as you begin to move across the city like a smear.
This goes on for a long time. You limp around, you dig a burrow for the earth to
surround you, you regenerate, you wander at night looking for others. You create
diversions, traps, tripwires to alarm you of intruders. You share food with others.
You are on different continents yet this doesn’t matter since you are now so
many you can bridge across them. You go to the capital to show one of your
arms that was found at a dumpsite with some of the flesh removed. You weep,
you sing, you chant in unison, and you rain curses on all the killers.
You start to speak and the crowd goes silent. “Any ritual killer, who attempts to
take life will be punished…If he thinks…a prostitute has no worth…make sure he
does not live to tell his own story. You say it now and confirm it, that as far as you
are concerned…you babes are ready for them. They should come with their
charms. You will deal with them. Now, you are potent as a bomb.”
118
You have heard the last gurglings of power
indebted to an order of sun
a cracking pelvis a shattering jaw
a palace burns
You stand silent
You start again
You must be terrified of this life until you destroy it.
The whore must believe in revenge.
Let’s look at this crowbar, what do you see?
You call it a process
You call it freedom
You call it deflecting
You call it a bouquet of errors
119
Instead of running, now you hunt. You remember you are the spider.
You have taken over a local TV station and in place of a news anchor you talk of
your plans and command the frame.
“You’ll get him first, yeah, you are going to get him first. When you find him, he is
going to be sorry. It is as simple as that.”
120
Resistance
how does it devastate
and mark you
no more healing as justice
no more vigils or candlelit sympathy
no more compromises
to steal away a cyclical motion
of harm
How you’d wear the night
on your chest
all the beauty in your refusal
your bravery pushing through
thought you couldn’t go on
a feather of the time you spoke
while you cut the world in stars
and said it’s not the end
to not relinquish
to not retreat
121
Remember how he said he liked
to keep your bodies in groups
that he called clusters
he would drive by
and think of the women placed there
of others he’d like to add
122
Bodies
now a social accumulation
what revives what kills
The collection of
your skin peeling away in thick slabs
your limbs falling off
your remains
your bones
your smiles
your tears
all the parts slipping
into a pile
a spilling architecture
cracking as it grows
until it forms chains of tensile structures
growing and shrinking
through teething
and molting
a new breathing
123
124
This work would not be possible without the stories and lives of women who have
experienced gendered violence and their courage to overcome and live. This is in
dedication to survivors everywhere, for every sex worker who refused to die a
statistic, and in remembrance to those lost.
Excerpts of this manuscript have been published in Elderly, ARMED CELL,
Tripwire, and for The Poetry Project.
“THIS WORLD MUST DISAPPEAR: POSTSCRIPT FOR A FUTURE’S PAST,”
catalog essay for Sapphire, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, Chicago IL, Oct 7-Jan 14,
2017. Thank you to Nabiha Khan for commissioning this piece.
Portions of A Theory in Tears (ANNOTATIONS & CASES FOR FREEDOM &
PROSTITUTION) from Kenning Editions’ Ordinance Series (2016), endless
thanks to Patrick Durgin for publishing it and his patient support.
Thank you to Judah Rubin for inviting me to read this work at the Poetry Project
and publishing an excerpt on the website and newsletter.
Parts of this work were derived from the performance The Arm Collector, by
TRAUMA DOG (myself & Rachel Ellison) for the first Festival of Poets Theater in
2015 at Sector 2337 (thank you again to Patrick & Devin).
The writing of this manuscript was made possible by generous support and
residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA during Fall
2016 and ResidencyX at Flying Object in Hadley, MA during Summer 2014.
I am extremely grateful for the support and ferocious music of LINGUA IGNOTA
(Kristin Hayter) whose liturgical power-violence opened up new voices for
embodied survival and resilience, along with the many friends and comrades who
have read this work and given invaluable criticism, support, and inspiration at
various stages: Brian Whitener, Nicole Trigg, David Buuck, James Payne, Ted
Rees, Jennifer Nelson, Cody Troyan, Rona Lorimer, Blake Butler, Jasper Bernes,
Tom Allen, Thom Donovan, Fox Hysen, Amanda Trager and Eric Moskowitz.