2 poems with photographs
Score for Body as Improvised Shelter
Begin with skin | haptic salutes | hot content | scorched chorus | zip the hazmat | fashion
yourself a houseboat | afloat on two inches of water | or a modern | ark on rising seas | the
dolphin was once | the name of a dance | all morning gone | swimming in the marrow | all
afternoon | practice meaty deliverance | errand into third eye | architecture between ears |
hands thoroughly measure | no place in particular | trade in this dream | for shouldered
stone arches | or strong thighs | navigate seminal encounters | misplace some names | find
more sticks | for the fort | index finger points west | sun melts what's left | bones are
glacial | skull a bowl | with delicious contents | now light exits | the shapely nebula
Score for Body as Terrestrial Experiment
Pledge allegiance to sixteen senses | milk the lion | to feed the lamb | siphon this river |
measure toxic index | collect stones | rolled in pollen | tell the moon, soon | dress the body
in honey | sawdust & asbestos | formaldehyde & dandelion | speak in feathers | tarred &
lettered | build a house | for the red bird | of the tongue | regard the body | as ghost meat |
spectral suit | skin a bridge | a flesh proof | equation | worked by centuries |
consumption, consumption | unhinge the jaws | swallow all | the black air
Willa Carroll is the author of Nerve Chorus, one of Entropy Magazine’s Best Poetry Books of 2018. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, LARB Quarterly Journal, Tin House, and elsewhere. A finalist for The Georgia Poetry Prize, she won Tupelo Quarterly’s TQ7 Poetry Prize and Narrative Magazine’s Third Annual Poetry Contest. Her multimedia performance work has been presented in New York City and she’s collaborated with numerous experimental dance and theater artists, musicians, and filmmakers. She lives in Manhattan. willacarroll.com
Photographs by Darrell Taunt and Andreas von Scheele, from Willa Carroll’s performance video series: PROJECT HAZMAT.