A sensorium makes you abstract

grilled right into yourself into the grille

a sobby plasticity of childhood

or the lot that behooves women,

imposes doom and the negative

clings to negative non-women,

loves the negative,

& loves women.
There was a time in the early nineties

words like “exigencies”

                      and “antagonism” did not exist

Freud and Marx were beyond dead, worse,

Carolyn Steedman and Bernadette Mayer

were completely mute, nowhere around.

She fêted abstraction and

pursued it relentlessly.

Like a bat in a cave
Or a dedicated virgin saint, maybe—

then maybe:
One day, a man hammered at the door.

Who is that! Who is that man
(list of things I wanted as a girl)

A man’s arm resting around me

Black Book of Capitalism’s Embrace

Kids whose parents make them take fencing lessons

But you’re nobody, til somebody – it kills you

Etoliation gradually over the night

Suffolk as a green, green plant

We suffered and resentfully died