As part of the Wheeler Centre’s Hot Desk Fellowship program, Anthea Yang worked on Field Notes from an Interior Landscape, a poetry manuscript which explores concepts of selfhood, womanhood and artmaking through form, memory and fragmentation.
Disintegration
this is memory and i am afraid
of the way it works
how it can collapse over and into you
how it has an imagination of its own
dreams on its own a life it wants to live
and in it a house made of sugar and sunlight
it looks at love like love and makes it turn
softer, sweeter, wraps around nostalgia
and gives it: a body, two hands, a beating heart
and a stomach to hold desire in.
i will forget this room
this house
and the way the walls turn.
i will forget feelings and then give them
a different name to make up for the loss.
i have almost forgotten it all
and now what do i have left?
a memory: pomegranate juice dribbling
down my fingers, seeds in my mouth,
a bruise the size of a mandarin
on my heart.
again.
this is memory and i am afraid
of it and how it can collapse over you
how it dreams on its own
a house made of sunlight.
love turns sweeter
around nostalgia when it has
a body, two hands, a stomach
to hold desire in.
i will forget this room
and the way the walls turn.
i will forget feelings and the names
i gave for them.
what do i have left but pomegranate juice
dribbling down my mouth
seeds of a mandarin
planted on my heart?
again.
this is memory
and the way it works
can collapse you.
it dreams on its own
a house made sweeter
and nostalgia is a hand
to hold.
i will forget this room
and the names i gave for loss.
what is left?
again.
this is the collapse.
nostalgia holds
a body.
nothing is
left.