Falsehood
Playlist by After Hours EditionsWe move through so much of life without a witness, I want Emily Brandt to be mine. Falsehood is a collection of everyday interactions and not normal situations that the world likes to call normal. And just when I thought no one was paying attention, here comes Brandt, she’s been absorbing and collecting the unacceptable norms built by the patriarchy all along. The result is Falsehood, a fierce translation and actualization of so many moments we assumed we were alone with. Brandt’s poetry is like a feminist sleeper cell, easing us out of isolation for a laugh before continuing our lifetime sentence of talk therapy and EMDR. Thank the goddess and the witness! —Sini Anderson, Director of The Punk Singer
The Galley Bitch
Wake at 4 to be on time for my first job cuttingsquid on the St. Anthony. The gulls in Captree State Parkare furious for fish and gas sheens the surface.I am inspired by what’s happening. Captain Billtells me I'll be pretty when I grow boobsand hands me an ice-pick. The block of ice weighstwenty pounds. I'll inspire my people too, show themhow to pull the spines from squid while smoking.The mates already know this trick. They fidgetin the cabin with coffee and cards, wait for fish.There's not any question about girlsbeing strong, about the open bay, about survivalat stake. I'd love to make some food for paybut here everything’s frozen, everyone drunk.I hate one mate so I ash his burger. I fallasleep in the galley and wake:a blowfish bloats my pocket. I take his revenge lesson with me.
Girl claims her manhood
My three sisters shared the same wallsthe same womb, the same wagonswaying between screams: Walkman. Walkman.Walkman. Fourth Walkman. Packedextra batteries thank god, take me home.I learned to use a blinker, to tailgate,how to wipe the windshield, smoke out the window,how to lock doors, how to open.Purposeful at midnight. A round of shots before vomitinginto a hat took from someone’s head, a stranger,a bloodpunch and a phonecall, a doorand a quarter tank of gas.This forged note to the nurse. Swollencheeks look like penance, but they’re a concoction.There are books about it, an encyclopedia. We atehoneysuckles after the planesflew by and sprayed.
I stuffed my bra with socks
I say I want to be her but I knowI want to touch her.I make myselfa mannequin.The bee's stinger weavesthrough blonde hair, traces map lines:the way to the trail in the woods where the reedswent up in flame, and to all the neighborhood pools,which water is warmestand which will sting your eyes.
Lunchtime conversation
Put the timer on for thirty minutes and let’s talk about something else. The way the keys sound when you press them but the strings are cut. Pulling a clump of grass from the yard. Don’t pull the grass, Dad will yell. I jumped off the top of the station wagon and landed in the present moment. Astrologically I shouldn’t be here. I should be in a different house with a different sign. The old astronomers drew the finest maps that were incorrect at a time when people killed for ideas, which is now, I folded a piece of paper over a comb to make music and it worked. I froze a thread to a cube of ice and it worked. I tried out math tricks and they worked. I shoplifted and my skin worked. I peeled open an orange and the smell came out. I flipped over the handlebars, got strips of red roadburn under my breasts and thought I would turn into a boy and I did. It was easy. Any shirt would hurt because of systemic friction. Like a tattoo coming off over years. Every time your skin hits the surface of the pool, there is rubbing. There are replacements for what comes off skin but not for skin itself, undervalued as the largest organ despite common knowledge of the fact. Moving the body is one nice thing about life. It’s alarming how skin separates you from the organs around you. When I bake bread, the particles all stay in the pan or so it looks, and so I believe. I simplified an equation and it worked for a while. The first thought is not always best, especially at a time when we are dying for thought. There are different ways of liking football. You who like football are extremely smart. Either way, it’s nice to watch bodies move, watch them work, and work ourselves sometimes too. I have tried to like all bodies and failed. I favor the shape of the bruise. Let’s go back to talking work. Let’s talk the work that keeps the bread inside the pan. Let’s talk the work that keeps all those particles in their pan.
I want to be the kind of man who smokes
with fingers like forktines stabbing at geodes, fruitless. Down in the valley of discontent, a man clubs his ball in the hole. A man kicks his ball in the goal. A man throws his ball in the net. Slow down the shock so it sounds like lightning, a wheezing kettle, space heat. A man runs his ball across the line hits out of the park. A man bones his ball into the sun and it explodes in an ecstasy of light. Two men volley a ball back and forth, a midwinter tale. One man victorious wears an item on his head, perhaps a symbol, perhaps for smoke, for mineral light. The caves are darker than ever before. Luminosity is fruitless with all these fingers stabbing blindly at anything dark, anything female. One no longer makes paint from ground mineral, but buys. He pays cash and pours the single color over the whole damn town. There is money to be made, and lack-valleys full of pitch and holes.
How to
The only way left for a girl to be radical in America is to camp in the woods for decades until she is ready to die then build her own funeral pyre surrounded by stones and light it well. You are the genius of the ash heap and everyone else in the woods, all of the scavengers, will mourn.