ISSUE 01: STATE(D) VIOLENCE
ABOUT
MADELINE ROSE
Madeline Rose is a poet and teacher from the streets of Bakersfield. Work can be found in Denver Quarterly, boundary2, The Back Room, diSONARE, dirtchild, and elsewhere in chapbooks and zines. Madeline lives and works in Berkeley.
PROBE DEPTHS BEFORE TRYING TO CHANGE SURFACE
world began
with hunger
want to love the days
just wow what world
alone with acres of wishes
grammar infects silence
indescribable shade
temerous self-made laws
shed twilight upon contact
sucking at the distance
I know why mystics hide
living hard, telluric, and actioned by a fever
are you a lover who imagines durable works?
danger is having feelings
and no money
don’t try to fall in love
with my face
every mystic
barely exists
I AIM TO WRITE THE OCCASION TO WHICH I BELONG
I want to write the facts of
birds and flowers
but you know I don’t know their names
today’s downpour reminds me
it’s exhausting to continually believe in innocence
while this world’s hidden
joys elaborate under
uneven fire, a sky-pulsed perfume
of indifference
yet we go on conserving ourselves for
the moment of revolution
within this quickening malady—
I cannot deny myself what I already know:
love speeds up heart because of the possibility of its refusal
it is dangerous to disbelieve your own senses
I have only wanted to see my own mind and
my body is a lonely empire
DON’T SWEAT—YOUR PRACTICE IS PURIFYING
some haunting perplexes the fault line
tensing our geological confidence
holding court in my mind I let
time just go
pure awareness is the process of full humanization
just see the moon