& Now I’ve Said the Opposite of What I Mean

Claire Bendiner

Emma McMillan

Sofya Shpurova

February 25

Bernadette Mayer

and resourceful, succumbing to the most secure fantasies, fantasies of not writing, even fantasies of being scared or unhappy, careful what words I use but not so careful what words of other people stick in my mind, as if, "in trouble"

and loved, denying at the least a desire & a swing of

fantasies evolving & getting lost in the intimacy of desire

as only one's own, not shared, and at the most an assertion of that love which can be rendered, almost picked, for a portrait,

it is so clear

and clear, I had even anticipated the bookbag, clear as that,

not in doubt that, what I want or even need, but doubt that space of energy where this clarity remains intact without violation of the poses, not of that portrait, one of assertion, but of the

others standing still & still watching

and poses, my own, of the body's exhibition of strength,

the agility that performs around the exact center of a mesmerizing talent for the new, & now I've said the opposite of what I mean, this is the pose but it is also the strength

and you, the correlation of the resourcefulness the love the clarity and the pose with you in the arc of the painting that

is being made, in an obsession to be exact again & that is, clearly happy in a state of our own possession, as you possess yourself when you are writing that poem