The Mirror

i say i am conscious i am discreet i like the feel of his breast hair i like the smells of sex of sweat of skin i write the word 'blood' i imagine a meal meat in its crumbs veal beaten flat sour cream onions i get off the bus prosperous comfortable London taking by hazard is part of the pleasure an unfairness of secretaries nurses an impersonal poison it was part of his intention to rob words of their power to grow big if you insist on going to bed with history a period is something i forget seven of my family mother father most of my friends communists for days i have had to deal with a bad smell a remnant refugees in strange countries i pack myself with cotton wool i dream a great deal the history of Europe a grand piano a notebook a doll i take six earthenware pots i am giving pleasure an exterior orgasm a vaginal orgasm oh boy oh boy oh boy [From: Antin, D. (1968) Code of flag behavior . Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press. p57.]

iii. Our heads ached. we were slightly sick with the smell of blood to a woman to women to the enemy i suppose we could say that they name us we feel safe with them we are on some kind of frontier we are frightened  trying to create men have i hurt you that i dreamed the dream was a telephone conversation these words moved me but i sat in a kind of cold fog i am the evil vase yet they were all used to it they had been living inside it for years it was not strange to them only to me a man about fifty a bachelor or perhaps a married man a man and a woman married or perhaps in a long relationship an American man and an English woman man and a woman both sexually proud two rakes male and female together this time the woman a wandering man a woman artist a man and a woman in a love affair a woman who has fallen in love against her will a healthy woman in love with a man a man using g...