A text-mask to celebrate the publication of a new poem, "La femme aux yeux orange.," in the latest edition of berlin lit. Thank you to Editor Matthew McDonald for selecting it. I haven’t often been called "crazy" or "folle," but I have been sometimes by men deemed "stubborn," which in the equation of words appears to me rather like another exercise in disqualifying a woman’s position or intellect. What I’ve always loved about Hélène Bessette’s poetic novel Si – probably her most existential and philosophical – is how much the page and object is crafted to catch the woman, Désira in this case, in her stance, in what I term her "rational lunacy." My poem wants to rejoice in that with letting the Bessettian mood elongate through time, through other miseries. Yes, rejoice. Indulgence like obliteration.

You can ravish yourself in all of issue 11 here.