This poem is the result of partaking in Hoa Nguyen’s Tarot Maximus workshop, in which participants experimented with reading tarot alongside Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems. As a result, the tarot deck is mobilized as a system for re-configuring poetic creation. The selected cards inform the sensory detail, affective content, and formal features of the writing. In addition, a first line from Olson’s work provides the title for the poem. This work uses tarot and intertextual practices, alongside imagery borrowed from dream and autobiography, to challenge the singularity of voice in the poetic system. The “I” in “I am the gold machine” is made and unmade in relation to the companion, forming a “we” that is simultaneously ecological and technological. Memory moves outside the individual body, such that the singular “I” can be a child, a couple, and an old man. The poem suggests that the process of creation is inherently collaborative, whether drawing on the interior self (made up, as it is, of a life of interactions with others) or an external reading practice (relying, necessarily, on personal choice).

—Jessi MacEachern

 

___________________

I am the gold machine

I am made big
made small
unwell and deep inside the worm’s hole
changing size and unable to feel the body
whole

once barren
now lush
will my companion look up from his work
my future in his lap

will my companion look up from his work
outside the day is wet with lush
green witches

inside the body is a smaller self
an infinity of mirrored selves
now made big
now made small
as separate beings my companion and I
we are affixed to the dais
hands in blessing
we are recuperating
any moment now we will bounce up
outside the mouth

reproductive technology makes it possible
to birth the self
the mess is small

any moment now the recuperative space
of the mind will flicker
the mind
made small
—

I am a child in a torn dress
with my genitals moving loosely in the far stream
not bothering to cover myself
for what child means is loved one
what genitals stand for are affinities

if you take your size too literally
my companion
you will drown in loose lust
—

I am running through the illustrated fields
of childhood with my loose genitals
and breaking off the choke-cherry leaves
and coming to that shore line where you
my companion
are nodding off

into the recuperative space of the mind
a flicker
—

The water is as cold as May
I mean, Mae
the grandmother whose scolding hands
clutch the locked, unlocked
diary in which I wrote
well
let’s not touch that
too closely
the water is cold and I am an old man
bare ass plunging

another shore line is inevitable
at the end of the journey
if you move, as directed, to the east
or the west
but never both at once
we two are three
or many more
flagrantly lifting our robes
we become another size

 

___________________

Jessi MacEachern (she/her) lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her poetry has recently appeared in Vallum, Touch the Donkey, and CAROUSEL. Her debut poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks was published by Invisible in 2021. Her forthcoming poetry collection is Cut Side Down and will be published by Invisible in 2025.