I really enjoyed today’s “eco-poetics” writing workshop (facilitated by Kristin Prevallet) focused on & problematizing prepositions. Language is somatic, isn’t it? Why does the english language have more prepositions than any other language, and what might it have to do with containment and possibly oppression and colonization? At the end of the workshop we were prompted to create a “list poem,” in which every line of the poem starts with a preposition. At least that is what I understood the prompt to be. Here I’ll share my raw, unedited writing response. What do you think about prepositions, the way they live in your body, shape your perception and worldview and consciousness? Or is your consciousness shaped by your language full of prepositions? For folks who speak languages other than english, I’m particularly eager to hear your thoughts about prepositions and whether they also have a function in your language.
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Preposition Poem 6/23/20
unlike me
toward the future seeking subterfuge
around the maypole came crashing down
above ground, sucking up air
inside the system, esophagus
to the mayor and council people:
until “we” get what we want
during the lockdown of course
into you into the earth into plantations
despite doesn’t paint a picture or locate you
beneath a fallen statue or a conflicted heart
except when your great great great grandfather
through the garden of eden
behind the tree & the woman behind the words of grass
among the knowledge we never wanted
upon the bodies and animal bones we broke
at the end of all reasons and roads and logic
by the chaos in our hats and drawers
for the undoing of doing itself
between the weeds and the Hydrangeas
within the voices of the beautiful ghosts of the Forest Farm
within the spores of the intergalactic beings
without the illusion
“without a body or a numb and useless mind”
by Larkin Grimm who told me to learn harp circa 1984, circa
Juneteenth which they never taught me about in school
about time about face
besides the flowers seed themselves
without our help
unlike the colonial bricks fashioned to kill
the mysterious plants
unlike their own knowable allies