This long poem by Lotte L. S. gathers fractured perspectives in a persistent and persisting voice: forthright yet observant, not impervious to beauty, but keeping one eye to the deadening structures of capital and the state. The body at the centre of these perspectives is a little anonymous, a little fungible, enlivened by moments of sexuality and sensuousness that stretch beyond their immediate present. When she hypothesizes that “time is just perspective, and / perspective: time,” perspective emerges by turns as a situated limitation and a site of possibility. Annual and diurnal rhythms overlap, appear in fragments, feel disorienting or eternal; the speaker is suddenly in a narrative and just as suddenly outside it. And she is spoken through by other poets who might share those perspectives and experiences. “Imitating crown shyness,” her life is apart from others yet shaped by them exactly, inhabiting the spaces they have vacated or left behind. – The Editors and the Poetry Staff

Lotte L.S.

Twelve Days of 21st Century Rain

A voice rang out from the boiler in visceral encounter:

“You must change your life.”

The hibiscus moved in the breeze,

everything else staying still.

Well: the seagulls, the seagulls.

Carbon monoxide had already claimed the last inhabitant —

as if to misread sleep

like to think of myself high up at the window

imitating crown shyness

continually changing faulty light bulbs

at the ends of summer

hesitating to thrust myself into others’ lives,

other lives. A life,

all £430 worth of it. Dangerous
of course

to draw parallels: tried the detectors,

tried the weekly whole-building alarms,

tried to imagine I could change my life —

her dancing beneath the pines, told me:

to love without doubt

is to fuck without desire,

and yet the nectarines are still ripe and juicy on the table

at this time of year

but I want them hard as can be,

actualised at the ends of a midnight-blue corset dream —

hands enough to touch yourself

and watch the starlings murmur,

a whole host of fish

unionising at the same time every year
to swim

a full circle and disappear,

wondering

if time is just perspective, and

perspective: time.

It touched me where it hurt,

but the hurting felt good —

seagulls watching from each rooftop,

St George’s Cross flags razed across every allotment plot

long road of curtains
rippled open, crystallise my senses

alone with a boiler

that doesn’t emit a smell or sound or sight

and all the windows are open —

miniature ballet dancers twirling off the sill
in small succession

someone screaming, “I’m gonna fucking kill you

you motherfucking son of a bitch”

cries streaming over from the dark-bright street below,

weekly Tuesday fireworks

jacked-up and disseminating in rounds from the beach.

In the almost darkness

we cannot delegate “our” desire,

seagull shit dripping down the windows
in hot, thick tangles

of a flat last inhabited, and I would have to say

“OK, thanks. I didn’t know.” Why is this night

different from all the others?

The emphasis to fall on the asking,

the making of an unchanged life

awake until sunrise —

avoiding the surprise of sleep

gave me dreams:

trees lining boulevards in the south of France

you absentmindedly on your knees in the corner

tipping something softly down the back of your throat.

Do you know it?

I tried to laugh and understand

the pieces of human movement,

one glance capturing a shape that emerged from them all:

the fascist compost of the allotments,

green was the forest drenched with shadows

of my own lack —

I decided I’d rather throw every broccoli head in the bin.

And my own: a tenant to evict, landlord

a penis to guillotine,

police sirens ricocheting across the curtains

unduly feminised in their flutterings,

pink lilies bursting from the vase on the floor

telling me: “I want to live deliberately” —

“I want to live alive”

headphones on

means I can’t hear them

coming down the boulevard

coming down the high street

the road I inhabit that leads so clearly to the sea —

striding their guillotined dicks

down the deserted streets.

A woman was arrested the other morning,

I saw it from the window: cops cuffing her to the car,

miniature ballet dancers

spinning from the windowsill

gliding through the soft lace of the air

to pinch cop tyres flat

with their tightly pricked slippers.

He literally wrote a worldview

wherein she “went” out the window

of his thirty-fourth-floor New York apartment

in a blue bikini

and a judge signed off on it.

Awareness, or blossom:

an archived commodity

in which
perspective is the removed corset

often police ourselves

to take off our clothes —

but what’s another way to look at this?

What else
could you have asked?

If you don’t recognise me

among the treed-up, jacked-up roads

the logical supposition

of boulevards I have never been

it is because I took off all my clothes

in my most confrontational

means I can’t hear them

edgelit and hooting in the trees

a politicised people

suddenly and casually

wondering if you were going to take your socks off
before you came.

These days I am trying hard not to come so consistently —

instead asking my mother, “how are you feeling today?”

wondering if I’ll ever see her

dance beneath the pines,

fantasise about suffocating my landlord

with deliberate marmite: a whole feast of mugwort

on the bedside table; gave me dreams of killing children, told me

to dare imagining

it’s not a thing you can touch

Notes: ‘Dangerous / of course / to draw parallels’ is lifted from ‘Sunset, December, 1993’ by Adrienne Rich […Yet more dangerous to write / as if there were a steady course, we and our poems / protected: the individual life, protected’] // ‘and all the windows are open’ is reworked from the final line of Gloria Dawson’s poem ‘What Dreaming Makes.’ // ‘We cannot delegate “our” desire’ is reworked from Communiqué 7 by the Angry Brigade // ‘green was the forest drenched with shadows’ is lifted from The Spring Flowers Own by Etel Adnan. // ‘the soft lace of the air’ is reworked from ‘Poem for Haruko’ by June Jordan. // Carl Andre claimed that the artist Ana Mendieta “went out the window” of his thirty-fourth-floor apartment, wearing a blue bikini, early on the morning of September 8, 1985. He was accused and acquitted for her death, choosing a judge over a jury. “She made me change her light bulbs. She was afraid of heights. She would never go near the window,”  Carolee Schneeman later said. // ‘Awareness, or blossom:’ is reworked from ‘There’s an affinity between awareness and blossom.’ in ‘Hello, the Roses’ by Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge. // ‘perspective is the removed corset’ is lifted from ‘After Vuillard’ by Sarah Maclay, first shared at Community of Writers 2019. // ‘to dare imagining’ is lifted from To Dare Imagining: Rojava Revolution, edited by Dilar Dirik, David Levi Strauss, Michael Taussig and Peter Lamborn Wilson.