Jennifer Barlett
     
                                      THE FIELD GUIDE TO THE BODY
	

Movement:                                                          So that, every gesture must be accounted
                                                                               for. The world all around becomes
                                                                               unique with longing

                                                                               a truck passess

                                                                               a building is red

                                                                               these things define themselves

                                                                               I am not the only one; each person
                                                                               is born with a certain blindness,
                                                                               an incapability to describe the interior.

                                                                               She tells him if there were no categories
                                                                               this looking would be impossible.
                                                                               She tells him, the only category for him
                                                                               is beauty.

 





Story: 	                                                                    So that, this is a body that know itself
                                                                                 having no alternative reference.
 





Movement 2:                                                         So that, motion is not merely
                                                                                 something in the abstract.

                                                                                 For example, a boy rollerblading
                                                                                 down the street on crutches and one leg. 
 





Speech:                                                                   So that, there is a shower from within. 
                                                                                 Water comes out like a thousand tiny
                                                                                  snowflakes of unknowing. 

                                                                                  Unlike others, my weaknesses are on
                                                                                  constant display. 


The hurry and delay:                                             So that, this going nowhere fast gets 
                                                                                   to me. And I get to it.
 






The Body as Rewritten                                         So that, the shadow crosses the street.     
in the Form of a Museum Piece:                         The shadow walks the beach,
                                                                                  its figure moves laboriously blanketed
                                                                                  by a series of LED lights: the movement
                                                                                  is, at once, distorted and beautiful.
                                                                                  After all, aren't we all damaged 
                                                                                  human forms. 

Jennifer Bartlett's first collection of poetry is Derivative of the Moving Image (UNM Press, 2007). In 2005, she was a New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. Individual poems have or will appear in The Brooklyn Rail, How2, Coconut and others.