SELECTIONS FROM INSTEAD OF DYING
Instead of dying, we take you in — sick, alone, confused — and
start a series of healing regimens. For the first week you drink
only water infused with lavender and vinegar. After the new
moon, we begin to feed you base elements: cream of tartar,
kombucha, filmjölk, carrots. When the visions subside, we start
the physical routine. The air is still cold as we start your lake
swimming cycles — twice across & back the length. You hear
robins like ticker tape through the branches of April. Your
mood improves. We cut out bread, cereals, muffins, milk. We
cut out gumdrops, taffy, milkshakes, wheat. Your hair calms
down, your fingernails are trimmed. Instead of dying, you start
jogging, in a zip-up track-suit, early in the morning, sunlight a
disco ball across your face, lawn-sprinklers starting up all over the
neighborhood.
–
Instead of dying, you build an elaborate village out of
plumbing. Even the plumbing has plumbing. You tell the
community that this construct of vital passageways is indicative
of microcosms within the geodesic loop. You tell them that
space isn’t space without unfilled vessels. You explain how the
pipes are not the actual substance of the village’s construction
— it’s the air that the tubes go through. Ignore the pipes, you
say. The real plumbing is the space in-between. This is the true
disposal system. This was the way the universe is flushed & refilled.
Lauren Haldeman is the author of the poetry collections Instead of Dying (winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry, forthcoming from Center for Literary Publishing 2017), Calenday (Rescue Press 2014) and the artist book The Eccentricity is Zero (Digraph Press 2014). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, The Colorado Review, Fence, jubilat, The Iowa Review, and The Rumpus. A comic book artist and poet, she has been a recipient of a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find her online at http://laurenhaldeman.com
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