bullpenned

2 poems
by Brandy Ryan

re verse all – jeanette winterson’s

‘cup knife compass remedy’

iii.

The strange thing about learning to look

to watch without living

… is that the eye becomes sharp, sharp

is a slow death

as a blade, and

the basil leaf left on the counter

… We start to see

unused ,

the world

that eyes me

differently, not as

as i peel, smash, and finely mince

an intellectual response, no,

the garlic,

I mean actually see

sliver the red-skinned

it, alive suddenly to

onion, julienne

ugliness and beauty, repelled by banality

(not Julian, a boy i knew once; he played guitar)

instead of habituated to it

this leaf.

The new

cannot command my attention

sight [of] art

as i heat oil

allows … no more blur

i unnotice it,

no more failure

and so its edges indigo in protest
of vision
furl inwards finally it withers to half its size in bloom.

Or, i may look – a fate no different in its inevitability.

CIBC national student loan centre

This post-amount

account Revision first revises into how

to divide infinite yielding to reckon the Wilde, number & divide their expense what of the women restrictions from discovering Revision women I could write begrudge silent-speaking—the truth the end of inquiring As a result revise the terms the letter confirm you the world Information time
I take not taken to steal and fly As the letter principle check that my scalp hadn’t melted write to see I write close start at the end to write a world pushed into have there is nothing enter stuck and catalogued with me deliciously unknown I seek letter outside terms terms unchanged holding placing open please the air and nothing chance to be other, to be either, to be ether (E)(vers 4.2) not invoiced ink put hooks in your mouth between and local and reckoned, accounted, due,

record.

*

perpetually (sometimes petulantly) playing with words, brandy ryan lives in toronto as she considers her next move.