Poetry von Moira Barrett
Legacy
When I started the job it was clear.
As an assistant and/or intern at a gallery and artists’ residency program not looking to support any artists, I was instructed to see to the repair of various internet connections installed and overused throughout the building’s front- back- and side wings all.
Asked to get on the phone with three different internet providers,
burrow into a rabbit hole of hotspots, bandwidths, ISPs, and tenants not getting what they paid for
I said yes.
Maybe you know I’m hard-headed and No comes to me naturally
without asking,
lives on the tip of my tongue in non-professional non-labor situations.
Goes to work disguised as smiling yes.
I’ve been close to No ever since we were pouting children together.
My little will to rejection
a force on its own.
Verweigerung: sounds like Refusal but feels more instinctive and from a place deep within
refusal and an involuntary withdrawal simultaneously
the food that repulses you, the body
rejecting an organ that doesn’t take.
I said yes but it didn’t prevent No from contaminating the task.
Never knew how and didn’t care to learn.
Floating up ahead: how quickly it could all be ding-done with
if only more would be yes
Uninterested as ever in the easy way out, it looks so much like the hard way
when I consider separating from ingrown No,
my life’s most lasting commitment
my invisible showcase of determination--
dragging my private refusal along the side of the road, all the way home.
Ocean Window and an untitled collage by Moira Barrett
Verweigerung: sounds like Refusal but feels more instinctive and comes from the unspeaking part of you
refusal and an involuntary withdrawal simultaneously
the food that repulses you, the body
rejecting an organ that doesn’t take.
Any painless solution
starts to hurt as much as anything when I consider long term separation from
the meaning of commitment before I ever fell in love:
long drags home along the side of the road, night after night.
stubborn knee-jerk disposition
guardian angel, hovering there unspoken
(and then you calmly taking it off my hands one day)
Over time, No grows into a quality of the problem and pushes solutions into a distant future.
Thick pre-war-walls thickened by my phlegmatic No
slowing down that signal.
If I forced my mind to change and be behind the task rather than
Find a solution! she commands.
Upper body hops to it, Ass slides further into No
naturally stronger
unless an unseen area can be tenderly tap-touched, discretion advised,
Falling in love was hard until it became soft
because No was always my familiar.
When brittle turned to liquid I feared losing hardness
as though it could be wholeness.
A primal fear of detachment, a hoarder’s fear of living without the useless thing,
or just the frightening pleasure of being caught off guard
in a malleable spot,
someone bending you without warning or permission?
Yes: most hesitant if I really want to say it.
No was locked out of the workplace, an assistant fills all visible gaps with yes
(yes, of course! solves problems, no task is too base for her and that’s how you become indespensable I hoped desperately) but maybe locking anything away in a body of flesh is just too good to be true
My stubborn knee-jerk disposition
My guardian angel, hovering unspoken.
After some time I tried again to really look at No and start over reasonably
but the roots had set, I couldn’t find the beginning to massage it soft.
Eventually No will separate from its source and seep fully into the walls, where it will linger after I am gone.
My legacy: the stopped up internet connection
Slower than ever before.
Guests will complain, interns will struggle.
Emails between them will move at a sluggish pace.
There will be no Beschleunigung
Only my gift of thorny brambles sprouting where I walk
Grow sideways, inwards, roundabout
tangle into purpose, please.
Moira Barrett ist Autorin, Übersetzerin und Künstlerin. Ihre Arbeit ist bei livingcontent.online und Ex Nunc Journal erschienen. Sie lebt und arbeitet in Berlin.
☞ Weiterlesen:
Moiras Website hier.
