Frances Libeau

waterbody_2

A foghorn sounding through fog makes the fog seem to be everything. ◦

everything
      makes            the fog
                                    seem
                                    to be

                        sounding
                              through

sounding

///

      the rain falls
                  light                  tossed as smoke
            between trees

      in the valley
      while the dog
                        chews an invisible
      bone                        remembering how good it was
                  & not knowing the
                  size of time

^{◦ Anne Carson, ‘An Ode to the Sublime By Monica Vitti’, Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (New York: Vintage, 2005) p.65.}

does it make you feel funny?◦

warm slush slow
      step singlecell
                  withstands      decading      torpor
                  trying passage      harbour-deep      supreme
                  heat   thermal inch      breath      builds
                  under       water       spurt       rush
                  gluey gentle       geyser
                  bubble brown under the credits
                              [ they look grey in real life
                  dust pulsing into the sky
                  earthen body push away            deep torque

                        [ she will manifest deep attachment ◦
                              for whoever has shocked her

i can’t name
the felt thing it is
even as if
the physical                 this agony
                                    the volcano
                                    belched great
                                    streams

dramatic
      tightening
      molecules
      into pimpling            lumps

      in the spa pool see
      small beads inflate with            teenage water
      flap of flannel      from the window under UV
                        clouds
      at the edge of it all we are      gloopy      gas-rich
                        slugging lump      jellied lens
                        high up in the      throat of      sky’s eye
      rush            the crust            heat so thick you can see it
      fires that lick                    without burning ◦
      the mountain            mumbles            its insides
                  reaching      for its lover

                  we cannot look away
we            living rash
itch           the surface of
                  old earth

^{◦ doesn’t it make you feel funny?
Maurice Gee, Under the Mountain (Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland: Penguin Books, 1982), p.24.}

^{◦ she will manifest deep attachment for whoever has shocked her
Anne Boyer, ‘The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock’, in Garments Against Women, (UK: Penguin Random House, 2015), p.9.}

^{◦ fires that lick / without burning
Paraphrasing Maurice Gee in Under the Mountain: “fires that licked round her face without burning”, p.54.}

Frances Libeau (fka Claire Duncan, they/she) is a writer/composer/sound designer from Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland. Their writing & sonic work features across disciplines including poetry, contemporary music, film, contemporary art & theatre.

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