More space taken by her body,
More decibels conquered by her voice,
More time by her wakefulness,
More equations by her addition.
She wants more, I want less.
Her blade is rusty, musty, sweaty and vain.
I like it clean and sharp and dark-bright.
She traffics in surplus,
I bare my essentials.
Her world is elastic but brittle.
Mine is bony but moonlit.
Hers flows, she ebbs.
Mine ebbs, I flow.
She dies in life, I live in death.
—Zoe Lund, “Opium Wars”
We share a weakness for tragic beauty!
ReplyDeleteClearly! Are you also a fan of Lund? I wrote extensively about Ms. 45 last year, if you're at all interested. It's housed here at the After Movie Diner, a site I write for now and then, mostly focusing on cult classics.
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You can also click over to see the rest of my stuff there, including this October's "Women of Horrotober" series of posts, some of which you might appreciate. I have four more set to run throughout the rest of this month, too.
Back to Zoe, though. Ms. 45 affected me deeply when I first saw it, and over the years it's never lost any of its power. I'm an inveterate champion of that film, always trying to rescue it from the genre ghetto most critics and audiences seem to relegate to. The film is a searing portrait of everything women have always faced, and are still facing today, from men.
I'd like to see if there's a collected works of Lund's poetry writing, but to my knowledge there isn't. I'd buy that in a heartbeat.
I didn't know anything about Zoe Lund until I came across your post. I do empathise with the poem and the struggle with addiction.
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