new from above/ground press: Autobiographical Ecology, by Isabel Sobral Campos

Autobiographical Ecology
Isabel Sobral Campos
$5

I set out to write a love letter and an account of a love affair: things done. things repaired. things enamored. the love affair, it turns out, could not be recounted. not because words failed to pervade in meaning. no. because the love affair was depleted of gravity. gravity gone, not even the ghost remained. thankfully there was Microsoft Word. the common feature of displacing text as if words unable to remain on the world’s surface (the page) were prevented from evaporating by the technical convenience of a processing operation. I didn’t attempt to make meaning out of this. meaning is the impossible here. the impossible is the love affair here. Microsoft Word understands about love. I find. Microsoft Word helps all lovers and recorders of love to blow back down words fleeing through space. blow. them. back. down. how you wonder? can something be blown back down? think of the hand touching the mouse dragging this word here and that one there. a phoneme and a morpheme too. not seeing the word(s). not attempting to make an arrangement pleasurable to the senses. not attempting to tap into the precision of events or experience. not following a visual shape that resembles a nice-looking organization of lines and spaces. just dragging up and down so short-circuiting gravity. some may call it revenge on atmospheric conditions. or a critique of attraction poles. I rather think it a sigh bubbling up from the intestines. one day I will write a love poem. with a curling frame of arabesques so hefty and unwieldy so capable of seducing gravity. I will forget about Microsoft’s wisdom then.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Isabel Sobral Campos is the author of Your Person Doesn’t Belong to You (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2018), and the chapbooks Material (No, Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2015) and You Will Be Made of Stone (dancing girl press, 2018). Her poetry has appeared in Bone Bouquet, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of the Sputnik & Fizzle publishing series.

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