Feelings are Rooms

                                                   After Kabir Carter, Bard College, 26 June 2018

 

Feeling knives the microphone to cauterize flesh        it amplifies 

 

Crackles the abrasive metal fabric

 

Blowtorches feedback hold and heel

 

Throttles and pauses the cord-pull

 

Lulls to lunge in transmission      back seat pocket

 

Alones the sound crowd

 

Accumulates the solitary intention of hooded jacket front punch

 

Zippers the match stick ignite

 

Handcuffs the thick slide probe with plastic tie

 

Zones between foot and huddle

 

Shrills the retreat from acted upon          or was it repeat

 

Tools the self animation 

 

Insomuch as the metal scrim

 

On denim is able to inhale

 

Skin-howl    blister   swipe

 

Caresses and so abrogates as to grip therefore

 

Larynxes stride and light step

 

Dry touch enveloping to self anoint

 

Tag      identify       anatomy     pulse

 

Whether pleasure or pain              it  collapses

 

Second human shell the cosmos

 

Automaton guest or X

 

Feeling that ligaments today in predation

 

It houses       it afflicts         it encircles

Credit

Copyright © 2019 by Roberto Tejada. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 6, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“In work that inspires my own, sound artist Kabir Carter enlivens architectural space by means of gestures and amplified acoustics (‘Underperformances’), his body interacting with microphone, mixer, and loudspeaker. ‘Feelings Are Rooms’ was the title given to Carter’s yearlong residency at ISSUE Project Room. During his 2018 performance at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, I drafted language that would later give voice to brutal forms of sonic intimacy, to the limits of amplitude, and to my unlearning… but also to a refutation of the present as a preordained horizon.”
—Roberto Tejada