This excerpt from Ann Pedone's Benzo has been paired with an Iris van Herpen garment made from laser-cut mylar and accompanied by a kinetic mask crafted from transparent acrylic sheets featuring digitally printed faces. These pieces first appeared in Van Herpen's Syntopia show (2018) — a collection inspired by avian motion. Pedone's dynamic piece begins with a "masking river"and links eye to mouth, poem to body. In the carnal torsion of its "speechy copulation," a new and potent material emerges.
— Paul Cunningham, Editor
From Benzo
Stuffed eternal’s
Tone of hormonal city
Hormonal indifference
Masking river of
Perverted memory of
Grammar’s dustbin
Just as
Something viscous
Now accumulating
Around the mouth the eye
How is its horror of
Saint rising to top of cream’s
Precious misapprehension
In the face of
As a substitute for speechy copulation
Or speech
Voluptuous speech
Which is machine for
The poem?
The body?
Three bleats out the door and
Barely digested
Man-handled
Petrified forest what?
Damage we will find later in metaphor’s
Tachy tissues made
Some neglectful husband just might
Climb out of bed with
Mind
Its exhausted muscles that might
Oxygen tent to
Ladies undergarments which could
Dare to utter
The Preludes
The sophists
Or such that
In a pinch they might
Spill over with text and fucking
Fucking and text’s
Small mammal giving birth in the woods
Spooned and swallowed
Breached?
Why?
Because within the confines of
Right after the evaporation of
The wide-open mouth of
Again fruitiness
Its potent sleep we all
Grown man’s shell game
Masked
Slightly ventilated
That would be jammy herbicide
Chewed just above the legal limit
Medicinal or just plain cunty
Like felt
Or satin
Or some broken fowl’s
Ann Pedone is a writer, publisher, and book designer. She is the author of three books of poetry and several chapbooks. Her poetry, reviews, interviews, and creative non-fiction have been published widely. Ann is the founder and editor-in-chief of Antiphony: a journal & press, and Pin//a journal of contemporary poetics.
