I was born awake and knowing and time keeps proving this:
men have reasons for breaking the rules. For me, thinking
has always been a logical process of if this, then that. I fit into
a chair. I sit in a room. I split in two—my body behaves but
my mind resists. It’s a simple truth that one can occupy two
places at one time while sitting in a chair—the same way a
poseable doll can be divided from her dress. It’s also true that
time will mesh us together. Until then, there’s another city on
the other side of this wall. A list listing reordered details might
read like this: light, glass, a metal stairway, one woman sitting
on the sill of a window, me in a chair. My feet on the floor,
face forward, arm bent, the very best of the body tucked into
place. But we are not dolls. We feel. We make mistakes.
A Numbered Graph That Shows How Each Part of the Body Would Fit Into A Chair
Mary Jo Bang
‘It’s a simple truth that one can occupy two / places at one time while sitting in a chair—the same way a / poseable doll can be divided from her dress.’
Granta 167: Extraction Online
You Are the Product
‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
You Are the Product
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
You Are the Product
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
You Are the Product
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
Two Poems
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
Mary Jo Bang
Mary Jo Bang is the author of seven books of poems and a translation of Dante's Inferno (with illustrations by Henrik Drescher). Her most recent collection is The Last Two Seconds. She is a Professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis, where she teaches in the Creative Writing Program.
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