What are you reading?

Juliana Spahr & Stephanie Young

Moving Borders

What if Kathleen Fraser and Bernadette Mayer stood naked

in the doorway entrance to a reading so that those

who wanted to listen to Rosmarie Waldrop reading

had to walk between them, touching them?

What if instead of reading poetry yet again, Nicole Brossard

cleaned the floor of the lecture hall/gallery/living

room on her hands and knees with a wet sponge?

What if the audience entered the darkened room of the

reading in which a single light illuminated Anne

Waldman's body stripped from the waist down,

smeared with blood and stretched and bound to the

table?

What if Fanny Howe arrived at readings, readings in

our community, but also at universities and other

institutional spaces, with the crotch cut out of her

jeans and carrying a machine gun?

What if Lyn Hejinian wrote only while inhabiting a glassfronted,

white, box-like room, dressed in white,

against which the menstrual blood was visible?

What if Ann Lauterbach masturbated in the corner while

Alice Notley read?

What if, while Maureen Owen edited her work, she

struggled to remain standing in a transparent plastic

cubicle filled with wet clay, repeatedly slipping and

falling?

What if Beverly Dahlen read her work with the foreshortened

barrel of a gun pointing toward the viewer?

What if Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Abigail Child began

each reading by documenting their relationship to

women's working conditions?

What if Rae Armantrout invited the audience to use some

objects on her body and/or cut off her clothes while

she was reading?

What if Susan Howe cut off the clothes of some audience

members, and/or did some things to her own body

with a series of objects?

What if Johanna Drucker regularly stashed her reading

materials in her bras/panties/socks/assholes and

removed them before reading?

What if Lynne Dreyer showed up to readings in stinking

clothes with balloons attached to her ears, nose, hair,

and teeth?

In the American Tree

What if Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten stood naked in

the doorway entrance to a reading so that those who

wanted to listen to Lyn Hejinian reading had to walk

between them, touching them?

What if instead of reading poetry yet again, Bob Perelman

cleaned the floor of the lecture hall/gallery/living

room on his hands and knees with a wet sponge?

What if the audience entered the darkened room of the

reading in which a single light illuminated Jean Day's

body stripped from the waist down, smeared with

blood and stretched and bound to the table?

What if David Melnick arrived at readings, readings in

our community, but also at universities and other

institutional spaces, with the crotch cut out of his

jeans and carrying a machine gun?

What if Michael Palmer wrote only while inhabiting a

glass-fronted, white, box-like room, dressed in white,

against which the menstrual blood was visible?

What if Larry Price masturbated in the corner while Kit

Robinson read?

What if, while Ron Silliman edited his work, he struggled

to remain standing in a transparent plastic cubicle

filled with wet clay, repeatedly slipping and falling?

What if Rae Armantrout read her work with the

foreshortened barrel of a gun pointing toward the

viewer?

What if Carla Harryman and Alan Bernheimer began each

reading by documenting their relationship to women's

working conditions?

What if Steve Benson invited the audience to use some

objects on his body and/or cut off his clothes while

he was reading?

What if Michael Davidson cut off the clothes of some

audience members, and/or did some things to his own

body with a series of objects?

What if Tom Mandel regularly stashed his reading materials

in his bra/panties/socks/asshole and removed them

before reading?

What if David Bromige showed up to readings in stinking

clothes with balloons attached to his ears, nose, hair,

and teeth?

These two pieces are excerpts from "Dear CAConrad," a letter to CAConrad in which we ask him to please make for us a somatic writing assignment that might help us generate the impossible: open and yet still meaningful feminist alliance. These two pieces are examples of our failure in imagination. They appear in A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a-machine-gun Feminism.