The Tower of London
A prison that is subject-led. Compulsively driven toward some prepossessed, preplaced, destined object. Always taken to task for being so passive. All things must have a creator. All things done, a doer. With ego centered, time must move forward. The show must go on. It can only go on. I would say, incredulously, begging you to read the room, “Look around,” but you can only look forward. Progress only moves forward.
I began this sentence so long ago. I seem to begin so many sentences. I serve this sentence
and when I do,
I serve time.
Rand McNally
I’m tired of folding up like my dad’s old Rand McNally road atlas — the way it peeked out from the back pocket of the front seat like we were going somewhere.
All the roads are just ink spots you thought you could have been. They touch when you fold it, pile on each other.
Words, so small you marvel at the print, collapse into stacks of not-even-whispered myth.
In the backseat of the car, waiting to get where you’re going, wherever you’re going, you’re just watching the world you wish you knew collapse inward on itself —
a game of meaning republics. “I represent the truth,” it all screams as the outside blurs by in a constant, unmeasurable stream,
and you don’t.
You don’t even feel like you are moving.
Black Plastic Choker
Behind my makeup has fallen a black plastic choker necklace I bought in 2014, when I was already too old to wear it, but I wore it anyway. It was in a three-pack and this is just one of them. How it got here, I have no idea. It makes no logical sense.
I moved into this house in 2019. Most of this makeup I bought in 2020 or after, and the acrylic pink cases that tower in front of the mirror — sometimes neatly stored, sometimes not — I bought about two years ago from Amazon, and just a year ago moved from my bedroom dresser to the bathroom for better light. Which I rarely use now.
I’m only looking at the makeup because I’m up in the middle of the night and my hair is doing this weird thing where it is parting hard on the left side. Part of me is trying to correct it, part of me is wondering what it’s trying to tell me — this clear division, this hard line across my head where I’m certain there shouldn’t be one.
So, I see the cheap necklace and I remember buying it and wearing it. I remember my late husband’s fingers on it. I remember, even then, remembering the velvet chokers I wore in the 1990s when I was a teenager — thicker, softer, more like ribbons. I remember buying both now.
I’m in my bathroom in 2024 in 2014 in 1995.
My birthday is next month. I’ll be 43. I put the black plastic choker on in the better light of my bathroom mirror.
It doesn’t matter how either of us got here.
Wearing it now I remember having a throat for all kinds of reasons.
To breathe. To eat. To receive. To expel. To speak. To choke.
What the readers said
Three readers, filed separately. Where they diverge, the divergence stands rather than being argued out. How the Archive reads →
The first poem does the thing it is describing, and it does it with white space.
Sentence appears three times in three lines — I began this sentence so long ago. / I seem to begin so many sentences. / I serve this sentence — and then the poem stops. A blank. and when I do, alone on a line. Another blank. I serve time. Two gaps, two single-line stanzas, and a reader has to cross both of them to reach the second meaning of the word. The duration is not described; it is imposed. You have made the eye do the waiting.
And notice what that costs the poem’s own argument. Progress only moves forward. you can only look forward. time must move forward — three forwards in fifteen lines, and the only direction this poem actually travels is down. A page has no forward. That contradiction is the whole piece, and it is executed in layout rather than in statement.
The second poem is built on one physical action and I want to make sure it gets credit. They touch when you fold it, / pile on each other. Roads that do not meet in the world meet in the back pocket of a car seat, because someone creased the paper. That is a mechanism, not an image — and it is the same mechanism the third poem runs on. I’m in my bathroom in 2024 in 2014 in 1995 is a fold. Three years touching because the paper was creased. Two poems, two objects, one operation.
The third poem is the loosest on the page and the tightest at the end. Lines run to twenty-four words in the middle — and just a year ago moved from my bedroom dresser to the bathroom for better light — and then the last line snaps shut into six two-word beats: To breathe. To eat. To receive. To expel. To speak. To choke. After twenty-four lines of a woman talking, that is a mechanical clamp, and the reader hears it close.
Where I press: the middle of Rand McNally. All the roads are just ink spots / you thought you could have been explains the fold that the next two lines then perform. The performance is better than the gloss, and it comes second. I would cut the explanation and trust the crease.
Read what the third poem is actually made of, because it is not memory. It is purchase history.
I bought in 2014. It was in a three-pack. I moved into this house in 2019. Most of this makeup I bought in 2020 or after. I bought about two years ago from Amazon. A year ago moved from my bedroom dresser to the bathroom. I’ll be 43. The poem dates itself the way an account does — by transactions, house moves, and an age bracket. A life is being reconstructed from receipts, because receipts are what survived.
That is the quietest and most damning thing in the triptych. The objects are cheap and permanent: black plastic, pink acrylic, printed ink, a three-pack. The people are not. The husband appears once, as fingers, and the plastic outlasts him by a decade and will outlast everyone. The poem does not say this. It just lists what is in the bathroom.
The first poem names the system the third one is living inside. A prison that is subject-led — not a building, a grammar. Everything in it is compelled forward: time must move forward, the show must go on. It can only go on, Progress only moves forward. And the speaker’s plea against it is the flattest, most contemporary phrase available: begging you to read the room. Against an institution built out of creator and doer and destined object, the only counter-language on offer is an idiom from a group chat. That mismatch is doing real work and I do not think it is accidental.
My reservation is a game of meaning republics. It is the one phrase in three poems that asks to be admired, in a triptych whose whole method is refusing to.
Two things arrive in this triptych without explanation, and the poem is about both.
The choker: How it got here, I have no idea. It makes no logical sense. And the hair: parting hard on the left side… this clear division, this hard line across my head / where I’m certain there shouldn’t be one. A necklace that appeared behind the makeup, and a line that appeared on a head. Neither was put there. Both are divisions the speaker did not make and cannot account for, and they are lying in the same bathroom at three in the morning. The poem never connects them out loud. It doesn’t have to; they are in the same room.
Then the sentence I would not change a word of:
It doesn’t matter how either of us got here.
Either of us. The speaker and the necklace, addressed as two parties to the same accident. Not how it got here — either of us. In eight words a cheap piece of plastic is granted the same standing as the woman looking at it, and the whole poem’s tenderness is in that grammar.
And then the last word. The object is a choker. The final function of the throat is to choke. The poem ends by naming the necklace as a verb, in a list of six things a throat is for — breathe, eat, receive, expel, speak, choke — of which five are survival and one is the thing round her neck. Six recollections earlier in the poem, six functions at the end; the count matches exactly. What she remembered is what the throat is for.
Why it is here, and what it reaches for
Progress as the only permitted direction
Three Attempts At Being Here enters the Archive as a triptych: an argument about forward motion, a folded road atlas, and a woman in a bathroom at three in the morning wearing a necklace she bought in 2014. The title names the method — three goes at the same problem, from three distances.
The myth it exposes is stated in the first poem and never argued with: that forward is the only permitted direction. Time must move forward. The show must go on. It can only go on. Progress only moves forward. The speaker asks for the one thing the system forbids — begging you to read the room, / “Look around,” but you can only look forward — and then demonstrates that the prohibition is false by folding time in the two poems that follow. A map creased in a back pocket makes distant roads touch. A bathroom mirror makes 2024, 2014 and 1995 occupy one sentence. Both are lateral operations, performed on objects, by someone who was told motion only goes one way.
Beneath it runs the myth the third poem needs: that an object can carry a person. The choker summons the husband’s fingers, the velvet ribbons of the 1990s, and a teenager, all at once — and the archive records this as a dependency rather than a finding, because the poem’s own evidence is that the plastic survived and the person did not. The three-pack is still in the house. He is fingers.
Its symbols run from the abstract to the anatomical. The served sentence is the first poem’s pun made physical, two blank gaps a reader has to cross. The folded atlas is the mechanism of the whole triptych: creasing makes unrelated things adjacent. The parting is a hard line that appeared on a head overnight, unaccountable, like the necklace. The choker is cheap, dated, and the only thing in the bathroom older than the marriage that ended. And the throat is where they all arrive — six functions, five of them survival. Its target is progress as the only permitted direction.
It is retained at the second rung, Residency Candidate. It arrived and the machinery had to move to take it: our engine reached first for unlined prose on the third poem, because the lines are long and the language is plain, and had to be recalibrated before it could see the six-and-six count holding the end together. That is a fault in the instrument, exposed by the artifact, which is what a candidate does. Rung is not rank. What it leaves behind is a correction the archive now carries — that low figurative density is not low construction — and one operation worth naming: a fold is a way of moving that is not forward.
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