Peggy Phelan

Dip the toe in water. Stand up. Dive. Splash. Die.

Look down. See the toe. Look up. See the sky.

See the toe touch the water. Dip. Dive.
Watch the water run.

The water drips at the end of the slide.
Water does not dry.
She cried.

See the sun soak the sidewalk. Hot. Waves. Heat wave.
She's entering menopause. The world goes slower.

On the television John Dean performs memory.
Listen to him recite the previous two years. Complete calendar.
He says he has a photographic memory.
Lacan says in every image there is a stain. A spot.
See spot run. See the stain movement makes.
History dries in a room with no music.
She hung the clothes on a line in the sun.
He watched the colors run.

The negative in the pan washes the image. In its chemical bath hallucinations of the past develop. John Dean boasts that he can easily retain information; law school taught him that.

She retains water now. Before menopause, she had to urinate constantly. The doctor said it was because of her pregnancies. Eight bodies in the same sack. Not a twin among them. Seventy two months pregnant. Six years. Now there is space to hold other bodies, but so far she holds only bodies of water.

[…]

Ellen Berkenblit, Naked Woman with Stocking, ink, gouache, pencil on paper, 1998

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