Carrie Hunter

Chthonic Revelations

I feel like the math in this conversation is over my head. Darwin never said survival of the fittest. Lack is the burden. I intend to be well enough today to read. Do I really not have the time or do I just not want to? The bisexual gaze. I am in the market for phrases. I don’t want things to be easy. Pedestrian detective. Trying to understand my misunderstanding. Dream in meditation of a red circle like a bullseye and a knight type came and put my mother’s quilt over it. Fear of science. At a maskless wedding. Easier to not take that action. If it works, you don’t see it working. You never get that contrafactual. Smoking over flowerpots. “Romance is not knowing the other.”

Sub-Stance Alice

Always wonder if my performance of my critique was good, as if it's art. Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens. Cut-out people in a cut-out poem. I stopped reading Jung when he started saying Arabic people are emotional and unreflective. I can’t remember what the metaphor is, but the literal thing is sex. When it takes as long to write the title as to listen to the song. I like her personality of worry. All those memes that are really writing prompts. Anything can be the cause of anything. No dreams, but melody. The reflection diminishes something of the original. If there was a dream, a cave, a donut, a memory, a narrowing path. Lyrics disrupt the epiphany. The moon is over the wrong tower.

Moon Museum

Double zooming. Reading is a form of waiting. I loved that article about the Denisovans and the Neanderthals. “In this age where duration is abolished,” we’re not listening correctly. Epistemology of the closet. Bi-directional friendships. A narrative that’s capacious. The oppositional we. Impulsivity as the opposite of a choice. I don’t like it when something is expected of me that feels mundane. Water came from comets or are there oceans under the earth? Not a lover, a reference. Do you think melatonin is addictive? Daydreams that are not in words but visual images that show a progression. Getting vaccinated on the full moon. The surface layer of religion. That clock is wrong. Snakestones.

The Hypnotist’s Desk

Practice being awake. Memories misrepresenting the truth. A culture of sadness and gloom surrounded by toys. A medium sized drink. The apple’s appellation. You can make things for no reason. James Joyce’s bathrobe. Attention economy. I got the worst of both worlds. I stopped doing intuitive writing because there’s nothing in it for me. “A spinster’s hysteria.” No clout in the unverifiable. But it was the mailman with a single letter. Death as a survival technique. The transition from winter to spring through bathtub imagery. She always left votive candles burning and then left. It hurt so much I thought I was bleeding, but I wasn’t. Ancient museum-goers. Wish a grumpy but ultimately nurturing lesbian would take care of me in my fever.

Carrie Hunter received her MFA/MA in the Poetics program at New College of California, was on the editorial board of Black Radish Books, and for 11 years, edited the chapbook press, ypolita press. She has published around 15 chapbooks and has two books out with Black Radish Books, The Incompossible and Orphan Machines, and a third full length, Vibratory Milieu, out with Nightboat Books. She lives in San Francisco and teaches ESL