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        • Daniel Staub Weinberg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Genevieve Rose Barr Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Eva Schultz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Samantha Malay Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • D Allen Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Hayley Harris Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Tony Peyser Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Santoni Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Julia Klatt Singer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Kathryn Kruse Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meg Freer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Moira Walsh Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Staab Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Anne Swannell Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Knott Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Jo Goren Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • CR Resetarits Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Ernestine Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Johnson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Charles J. March III Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Mosley Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Grace Desmarais Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Vieweg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Lawrence Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meca'Ayo Cole Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Andrea Rexilius Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christian Garduno Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Salma Ahmad Caller Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
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        • Michael Thompson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Rikki Santer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Gamache Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christine Williams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Beechem Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
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​​​The Fissured Tongue Series 

Four poems

"OK Scott I’m moving out now."

"Listen I am just trying to wait in line for an Impossible Burger after crying in my car & I don’t know how to interpret this moment of ambiguous & highly commercial loneliness"

"Walking along the Susquehanna River there is a personal strength I am almost reluctant to uncover"
​

"Aubade overlooking the highway"

grace (ge) gilbert
Picture
"A Violet Note" by James Abbott McNeill Whistler; Chalk and pastel on grey paper; 10 7/8 x 7 1/8 in; 1885; open source from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
OK Scott I’m moving out now.

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​severance is an IKEA bookshelf
                                                                        i’ve left for dead
 
                        the curb a morgue we never meant
                                                                                                             2 fill   
 
                                                O kitchen-light  / the moment
 
                        so hot it re-enters
                                                                                                            like a crowbar                                                 
i am handing u a phillip’s head screwdriver
 
                                                            remember
 
                                                                                                we are fucking
                                                                                                                        in a pile
 
                                                                                    of packing peanuts
 
                                    or         on the air mattress
 
that structurally can’t fathom
 
                                    this much                                             attention
 
                                                            O spot-cleaning           o candid familiar            body
 
                                                in the dark
 
            our love is a room
                                                            i can’t take with me
 
 
            this heart                      this dim           reluctant                                  muscle            
 
                        i am standing before it             1 more time    
                                   
 
i am tasked
                                                                                                        
                                    w/ such impossible corners
                                                                                                of Memory
Listen I am just trying to wait in line for an Impossible Burger after crying in my car & I don’t know how to interpret this moment of ambiguous & highly commercial loneliness

​lately i’ve been feeling
 
like a staged interpretation
 
of myself
 
 
i am always Ending Up
 
 
in these sore
 
constellations
 
            of people
 
 
 
I am always slack
 
against the real
Walking along the Susquehanna River there is a personal strength I am almost reluctant to uncover

O harmony o shot-thru
 
aggregate sunburn
 
            of a love
 
this is the itch
 
            of tenacity
 
 
            aren’t we so, so lost
 
            aren’t we cursed
 
 
with the continuance
 
            of water
Aubade overlooking the highway
walking up the hill
a moment ensues
 
            in the broke-open self;
 
the city a subtitle
across the plane
 
of sight,
traffic a concise
 
duration. lately i am in need
of danger
 
            in love; precarity
 
a darling
 
arrowhead, my pathology
 
no plain underfoot
            thing--
 
What do you need
            like an open throat?
 
i want to ask, Or
            can’t it be exciting
 
how anything
            one step forward
 
            could lose
 
itself, a wide
            perfect
 
crisis, highway
 
the last thing
to forgive
 
            a body ?
 
O moonlight o laconic
            posture
 
in traffic there is something
            in the red thin
 
            light
 
so clean so
            dangerous
 
that makes me
 
            need you
 
O cinema o thing
 
of my fantasy
 
if love is a gift
            I am doing with it
 
what a child would
 
wrappings strewn
across the ground
 
            small body curled
 
                        unintelligible ribbon
 
            O hillside o mouth angled
toward action
 
to say I have loved you
 
is to say i have stood
 
            quietly
 
on a hill &
            imagined
 
  so perfectly
About the Author

grace (ge) gilbert is a poet and lyric essayist among other things. their chapbook, 'NOTIFICATIONS IN THE DARK' is forthcoming with Antenna Books in 2022. their essay collection 'the closeted diaries' is forthcoming with Porkbelly Press in 2022. their work has been featured in The Adroit Journal, Ninth Letter, the Offing, ANMLY, Pidgeonholes, Hobart, and elsewhere. they have received fellowships from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and City of Asylum. an MFA @Pitt, grace also loves cheese, macarons, their partner Boen Wang, and their cat Honey.

About the Work

"I was dumped during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, packed my bags, and slept on my sister's floor for a few months. during the day I would stalk my ex's Spotify activity and cry, walk along the Susquehanna, and/or write this little collection of abject/plague-breakup poems. I look at these poems as a sort of reckoning with the inability to brood/mourn socially during these times -- but also as an ode/gesture toward Impossible Burgers, my need, my hope, and unattaching from another human being."

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