Five Poems from the Large Soft Woman series
Becca Barniskis
Becca Barniskis
"field of here and not here”, Hildy Maze, 36 x 48 in., oil, paper, collage, 2019
Large Soft Woman Names & Splits the World into Various Parts
the part that is terrible in its terror terra firma ticking away
time-bomb-like ready to tear bodies and homes and terrain into tiny pieces
this part over here that fell off the cliff fuck, now it is broken
is someone going to fix this?
the inspected part and the part that slipped through without any oversight whatsoever
the part: I have no idea why I exist
and: I do and it’s not important anyway
the part that is supreme part supermarket part subprime loan submachine gun gunning
what part do you prefer? or is it part of what you do prefer is a part that is backordered
forever so you never have to face it
that part pant panting like a dogmanwomanchildthief crying a little and a laugh
escaped too
part of wearing pants is the legs isolated the genitalia held loose or free
or fierce or closely held like a company can be
like the centuries-old secrets of the Church can be unleashed &tongues
the part that is hellfire licking extremities to infinity
the part that is silk that is soft close-fitting gold a robe-way-of-life a jumpsuit lark
the part that is blooming growing and keeping being alive despite ongoing onslaughts
of slaughter
the outliving part
the part heaped with corpses corrupting into more chaos
all the parts necessary for survival: fucking, bearing, birthing, fucking feeding,
fucking fighting
the part that is terrible in its terror terra firma ticking away
time-bomb-like ready to tear bodies and homes and terrain into tiny pieces
this part over here that fell off the cliff fuck, now it is broken
is someone going to fix this?
the inspected part and the part that slipped through without any oversight whatsoever
the part: I have no idea why I exist
and: I do and it’s not important anyway
the part that is supreme part supermarket part subprime loan submachine gun gunning
what part do you prefer? or is it part of what you do prefer is a part that is backordered
forever so you never have to face it
that part pant panting like a dogmanwomanchildthief crying a little and a laugh
escaped too
part of wearing pants is the legs isolated the genitalia held loose or free
or fierce or closely held like a company can be
like the centuries-old secrets of the Church can be unleashed &tongues
the part that is hellfire licking extremities to infinity
the part that is silk that is soft close-fitting gold a robe-way-of-life a jumpsuit lark
the part that is blooming growing and keeping being alive despite ongoing onslaughts
of slaughter
the outliving part
the part heaped with corpses corrupting into more chaos
all the parts necessary for survival: fucking, bearing, birthing, fucking feeding,
fucking fighting
Corporate LargeSoftWoman®
1.
Lissome in plate glass bend badge to scanner
Light step through door into cube
Lift flounce back on the sit down
Salty girl blanks the talk out
Siren call line one who’s calling
Signaling with fire managerial ebb and flow
What if they notice liquid black lips
What if they don’t
What if they see through tents pitched in defiance of fire codes
La la the law ain’t really on her side
Like a lady sporting a light support weapon
Lickety split this kindling for a fire
Skin the rabbit
Stir the pot
Send a message to Gerald in accounting
Who’s hungry we are
Who wants to go lunch hunting
Whose responsible we are
for this particular department’s encampment?
2.
Various LargeSoftWomen® mill about
the glasswalled breakroom feathered tails brushing one another
and crushed up against the walls
Smoky eyes behold a plate of food held high by a slender arm
will it drop not yet but soon the time
will come when spills become “opportunities”
.
It isn’t a holiday and it isn’t a party unless someone’s lit
herself on fire murmurs the Senior LSW®
blowing smoke off the rooftop
3.
decamp decamp all souls enlarge then park
themselves in a body following the “esprit de corps” memorandum
they march the night from floor 2 on up through human
resources past technical mistakes that marred fourth quarter gains
searching ever higher for that sales rep who snidely brusquely
that supervisor with his hands—
wait while one Blue Wolf dissolves
just ahead, slipping like the moon does
across snow and granite, climbing higher
into the starved air of the stairwell out through the unlocked door
thick fur just visible against roof pebbles until the sky finally
swallows it
4.
except there is no wolf only only see
the campaign expands to fill the need
with each new squad that arrives fewer employees
remain
the new world gets closer
and it’ll be much finer fuller than the one before
she said turning from the window
1.
Lissome in plate glass bend badge to scanner
Light step through door into cube
Lift flounce back on the sit down
Salty girl blanks the talk out
Siren call line one who’s calling
Signaling with fire managerial ebb and flow
What if they notice liquid black lips
What if they don’t
What if they see through tents pitched in defiance of fire codes
La la the law ain’t really on her side
Like a lady sporting a light support weapon
Lickety split this kindling for a fire
Skin the rabbit
Stir the pot
Send a message to Gerald in accounting
Who’s hungry we are
Who wants to go lunch hunting
Whose responsible we are
for this particular department’s encampment?
2.
Various LargeSoftWomen® mill about
the glasswalled breakroom feathered tails brushing one another
and crushed up against the walls
Smoky eyes behold a plate of food held high by a slender arm
will it drop not yet but soon the time
will come when spills become “opportunities”
.
It isn’t a holiday and it isn’t a party unless someone’s lit
herself on fire murmurs the Senior LSW®
blowing smoke off the rooftop
3.
decamp decamp all souls enlarge then park
themselves in a body following the “esprit de corps” memorandum
they march the night from floor 2 on up through human
resources past technical mistakes that marred fourth quarter gains
searching ever higher for that sales rep who snidely brusquely
that supervisor with his hands—
wait while one Blue Wolf dissolves
just ahead, slipping like the moon does
across snow and granite, climbing higher
into the starved air of the stairwell out through the unlocked door
thick fur just visible against roof pebbles until the sky finally
swallows it
4.
except there is no wolf only only see
the campaign expands to fill the need
with each new squad that arrives fewer employees
remain
the new world gets closer
and it’ll be much finer fuller than the one before
she said turning from the window
Large Soft Woman Words Wrung from Paintings of the Europe and America 1600-1900 Galleries at the Minneapolis Institute of Art
[see screen reader text version]
[see screen reader text version]
Large Soft Woman as a Motor Force of Revolutionary Struggle
I was thrown into the deep end: an
unoccupied ideological space full of
greeny chlorine and blue bent light.
I dared to struggle; to swim.
Our efforts are big equals Now & Power.
I acquired a voice and a capable pistol
with supersonic precision. It tells me
things at the tiniest level of detail
that I never heard anywhere else.
The fight is zero rolling toward Noted.
I have endured a series of soft warring states:
global reach versus locavore tendencies,
tender heart sheathed in steel, the mother
marching for and against her own.
Force is Mass times acceleration.
I want to share that; elevate the unheeded.
Commit to shoot, poison, and stab
practitioners of the paranoid style.
Soon Zone Ultra will come for they who hold sway.
The period of being strangled is ending.
I was thrown into the deep end: an
unoccupied ideological space full of
greeny chlorine and blue bent light.
I dared to struggle; to swim.
Our efforts are big equals Now & Power.
I acquired a voice and a capable pistol
with supersonic precision. It tells me
things at the tiniest level of detail
that I never heard anywhere else.
The fight is zero rolling toward Noted.
I have endured a series of soft warring states:
global reach versus locavore tendencies,
tender heart sheathed in steel, the mother
marching for and against her own.
Force is Mass times acceleration.
I want to share that; elevate the unheeded.
Commit to shoot, poison, and stab
practitioners of the paranoid style.
Soon Zone Ultra will come for they who hold sway.
The period of being strangled is ending.
Free
- to be rude
- to select another
- to be alive
- and interred inside a plastic dome in the desert if one has enough money
- to be stuck with peace of leaf of spinach in front-facing beak
- to be made war of
- to stockpile weapons
- to destruct a mass on a scale
- to weigh too
- and too much so
- to enlarge a body part by accident
- to shun and feint
- to feel fear even inside one’s marrow
- to be nervous about taking the last bone
- to take the last one
- to enjoy it
- to enjoy being the one who takes the last bone
- to spit into infinity
- to bookend tragedy with diatribic dieting advice
- to conduct a highly-decorated home décor from one’s bed
- and send it packing when insubordination rears its head
- to sleep and sleep on mismatched sheets
- to wake perchancing
- to take it all in
- to wear the shiny one instead of the regular
- to take it all off
- to smell and be smelled smelling smells
About the Author
Becca Barniskis: "Witnessing the U.S. government’s colossal and complete disregard for human lives and suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic has enraged me. Their prioritizing of profits over people goes hand in hand with their ongoing racist cop terror against Black people. And with their wanton destruction of the earth’s environment. And while I have always been uncompromising in my writing and art making, I feel now more than ever that my work must challenge people’s assumptions about race, gender, class, and power. Otherwise, why bother."
About the Work
“My “Large Soft Woman” poems explore through voice and character the oppression of women as a material condition of capitalism; they also make visible the ways women do or can seize power in various ways. I am interested in all the ways women appear and disappear in daily life and discourse and have found the label “Large Soft Woman” helpful in this regard."
Becca Barniskis: "Witnessing the U.S. government’s colossal and complete disregard for human lives and suffering during the COVID-19 pandemic has enraged me. Their prioritizing of profits over people goes hand in hand with their ongoing racist cop terror against Black people. And with their wanton destruction of the earth’s environment. And while I have always been uncompromising in my writing and art making, I feel now more than ever that my work must challenge people’s assumptions about race, gender, class, and power. Otherwise, why bother."
About the Work
“My “Large Soft Woman” poems explore through voice and character the oppression of women as a material condition of capitalism; they also make visible the ways women do or can seize power in various ways. I am interested in all the ways women appear and disappear in daily life and discourse and have found the label “Large Soft Woman” helpful in this regard."
About the Artist
Hildy Maze (Nov. 29 1949 - July 2, 2020) Hildy Maze submitted work to Inverted Syntax in 2019. We reshare in this issue this piece of art that she granted us the ability to publish. May her memory be a blessing.
“I’m an American artist with Turkish, Russian, Austrian heritage. Born in Brooklyn, NY I received a BFA from Pratt Institute. For years, I lived and worked in my loft in Tribectman, Cristina Riveraa, NYC before moving to East Hampton, NY where I currently work and live."
About the Art
"Living in this culture of the selfie this work turns the idea of “selfie” on itself in that I’m investigating the mind through these contemplative images questioning how and why we ignore our inherent basic nature of mind. We ask questions about everything out there; I’m questioning that which creates the question, i.e. our mind. Each image represents thoughts and emotions happening in the space of our mind. I see this work having a sense of community, a universal benefit beyond being a “picture”. I use abstract figurative representational form as the reference point giving the images an intimacy. These images evolve from within themselves, unfolding in a chain of experiments and reactions. Each piece is the result of a singular unpredicted development that varies from image to image, each with a collaged layering, fluctuate somewhere between the painterly and the graphic. Over the course of time, I have developed an expanding repertoire of forms and patterns, a series within a series that are recognizable as recurring elements. The work feels experimental resisting finality like suggestions or notes or indications of possibilities. Just as all things are impermanent, nothing is final, changes and adjustments can continually happen. I’m trying to create images that focus on knowledge about ourselves that is beyond words. Inherent knowledge that would be tedious to speak in words. People are not often willing to access this type of thought, and when they do it is often confusing, but none of us can escape the habit of projecting thoughts and concepts onto reality itself. Yet through awareness of our deeply ingrained conceptual biases, we can open new windows onto our minds."
Artist Statement
Most of this work was made in 2019 which visually explores how the mind interprets and appreciates, distorts and projects the images we perceive and the thoughts and emotions we struggle with. Focusing on abstract contemplative figurative images developed with the view that art can awaken us to the obscurations that cloud our mind from recognizing the clarity of awareness that is our inherent nature. With my experience of Tibetan Buddhist meditation, I use oil on paper or canvas, with collage to intimately describe how our active mind creates collages of thoughts and patterns, as in a dream. If we examine our thoughts, we can see they are fragmented, impressionable, and empty of solidity. None of us can avoid thoughts but through awareness of our pitfalls, beauty, strengths, and weaknesses we can open windows onto the mind. I’m interested in the study of how the mind works as a means of gaining insight into how we communicate, how we create an identity through form, emotions, and consciousness, and how we hide in that creation. Essentially this work is about all of us and the empty, clear and unconditional nature of mind we all have. I’ve exhibited my work throughout the U. S. including NYC, Long Island City, Brooklyn, California, Beijing, China as well as being included in several private collections in the U. S., Europe, and Asia.”
Hildy Maze (Nov. 29 1949 - July 2, 2020) Hildy Maze submitted work to Inverted Syntax in 2019. We reshare in this issue this piece of art that she granted us the ability to publish. May her memory be a blessing.
“I’m an American artist with Turkish, Russian, Austrian heritage. Born in Brooklyn, NY I received a BFA from Pratt Institute. For years, I lived and worked in my loft in Tribectman, Cristina Riveraa, NYC before moving to East Hampton, NY where I currently work and live."
About the Art
"Living in this culture of the selfie this work turns the idea of “selfie” on itself in that I’m investigating the mind through these contemplative images questioning how and why we ignore our inherent basic nature of mind. We ask questions about everything out there; I’m questioning that which creates the question, i.e. our mind. Each image represents thoughts and emotions happening in the space of our mind. I see this work having a sense of community, a universal benefit beyond being a “picture”. I use abstract figurative representational form as the reference point giving the images an intimacy. These images evolve from within themselves, unfolding in a chain of experiments and reactions. Each piece is the result of a singular unpredicted development that varies from image to image, each with a collaged layering, fluctuate somewhere between the painterly and the graphic. Over the course of time, I have developed an expanding repertoire of forms and patterns, a series within a series that are recognizable as recurring elements. The work feels experimental resisting finality like suggestions or notes or indications of possibilities. Just as all things are impermanent, nothing is final, changes and adjustments can continually happen. I’m trying to create images that focus on knowledge about ourselves that is beyond words. Inherent knowledge that would be tedious to speak in words. People are not often willing to access this type of thought, and when they do it is often confusing, but none of us can escape the habit of projecting thoughts and concepts onto reality itself. Yet through awareness of our deeply ingrained conceptual biases, we can open new windows onto our minds."
Artist Statement
Most of this work was made in 2019 which visually explores how the mind interprets and appreciates, distorts and projects the images we perceive and the thoughts and emotions we struggle with. Focusing on abstract contemplative figurative images developed with the view that art can awaken us to the obscurations that cloud our mind from recognizing the clarity of awareness that is our inherent nature. With my experience of Tibetan Buddhist meditation, I use oil on paper or canvas, with collage to intimately describe how our active mind creates collages of thoughts and patterns, as in a dream. If we examine our thoughts, we can see they are fragmented, impressionable, and empty of solidity. None of us can avoid thoughts but through awareness of our pitfalls, beauty, strengths, and weaknesses we can open windows onto the mind. I’m interested in the study of how the mind works as a means of gaining insight into how we communicate, how we create an identity through form, emotions, and consciousness, and how we hide in that creation. Essentially this work is about all of us and the empty, clear and unconditional nature of mind we all have. I’ve exhibited my work throughout the U. S. including NYC, Long Island City, Brooklyn, California, Beijing, China as well as being included in several private collections in the U. S., Europe, and Asia.”
