MUD

I walk in and the bedroom is still the same. Static.
Static, motionless, loveless before your absence,
I stand in the bedroom that remains the same.
The sun still shines and I can see the blinds reflected on the wall,
Exactly the same way they were that morning in November.
It seemed like summer.
Remember?

Just wipe your feet before you walk in,
Would you?
Stains of mud don’t seem to come out easily.
In some time, not enough time, I know,
I will get down on my knees,
Again dip my hands into a bucket full of Clorox
And hope that my nails are fierce, strong enough to scratch off your footsteps from the intimacy of the bedroom.
The intimacy of my static, motionless, loveless self.

Don’t bring mud into the house.
I know it won’t come out.
And, please, I need you to take your footsteps with you when you decide it’s time to fly.
Fly away.
Everyone flies.
I, on the contrary, seem to belong here,
Static, motionless, loveless, in a bedroom that still is the same in its deepest essence,
With the same restless sun bursting through the blinds
Making obvious, again, the absence of you.

It seems almost funny,
[unlikely, unnatural]
To picture myself,
[invited, wanted]
Leaving stains on someone else’s nest.

Would he ever walk in his bedroom,
[in that outer world his life seems to me]
To find,
[static, motionless, loveless]
That its emptiness is filled
[in fair exchange]
With the absence of me?

Would he ever walk in his bedroom
To find
That its emptiness is filled
With the absence of me?
In that outer world his life seems to me,
Static, motionless, loveless,
In fair exchange.

By Anita Petry
Em homenagem à minha amiga (poeta linda) Patrícia Del Rey.

Self-esteem and Foucault.

When it happens that I feel like writing, I have been sitting down and waiting for it to go away. Why is that? I feel everything I think is repetitive, is about myself; in fact, everything has been about the same aspects of myself.

I wish I had more money. I wish I were skinnier, stronger, taller, smarter, prettier, and funnier. I wish I had nicer clothes, better shoes. I wish my eyebrows were thinner, my arms were thinner, my breasts were bigger.

I wish my boyfriend loved me more.

I wish I were a better girlfriend, a better actress, a better daughter.

And now I’m reading more. And that’s miraculous remedy. For everything.

Reading is magical, powerful like nothing else I’ve had the chance to experience.

As I live in New York, I got partly used to witnessing bizarre episodes in the streets, the parks, the trains… Oh, the trains.

Today, coming back home from my first Stage Combat class, I sat reading in the subway car. The chosen piece (being read for the second time) is an amazing, highly recommended!, novel entitled Hallucinating Foucault. In the book, without getting into deeper details, an intense relationship is drawn between the (fictional) writer Paul Michel and the philosopher Michel Foucault. It’s an astonishing work of art.
At a certain point, we start reading letters from the fictional character addressed to the real philosopher. The letters touch on how much one learns from the other, on their styles of writing, their fear of death (or life).

Now that you got into the mood a little bit and you know where I was, imagine the sounds, voice and melody, of a 4-member mariachi group. Mexican intensity, color, and sounds, invaded, not the train, but my experience of… Foucault! And that moment (you might think I’m crazy now) would not have been the same if my idea, my experience of Foucault’s philosophy, hadn’t met Mexican music.

I thank the city of New York for being so unique.

I didn’t lift up my head to check them out. I didn’t question that fact -Is it good? Should they play in the train so loud like this? I just let it be. Because things… are. They don’t need us to be. But we do have the opportunity to choose a specific approach to them.

I let Foucault and mariachis become a magical encounter in the realms of my experience.

I’m glad.

And maybe I don’t need to be any skinnier now.





Anita Petry

Suddenly invading me...

Life scares me. Love scares me. Of all, happiness frightens me the most.

Is happiness really good? Whoever said that?

I don’t know how to be content.

I can’t relax. And can’t let go either.

My stomach hurts, my heart speeds up like a bullet, and here I am, sipping cheap whisky, listening to music:

The blue metronome of my discontent.

While happiness frightens me, music pierces me the most. I purse my lips, and breathe in deeply, in a sole, unprotected tremble.

Carlos Gardel keeps playing his beautiful music, as if my world was not being demolished under my feet.

The alarm clock goes off.

I get up and forget who I am.




Anita Petry

Ainda bem que aqui é permitido inventar.

"Como a gente é esquisito!"

Uma mulher com vagina.
Um homem com pênis.

"Por que ele é mais alto do que eu?"

E aí inventamos calças, mochilas,
chapéus e bolsos!

Hoje, no trem, tinha uma mulher parecida com a Ivete Sangalo.
Ela folheava uma revista de viagem.

Eu nunca fiz um cruzeiro e aquela revista me deu vontade de fazer um.

"Tá tão frio."
Tá desagradável. Tá doendo, queimando,
embranquecendo e depois avermelhando.

Tá frio mesmo.

"Sabia que no mar, ou seja, no cruzeiro, faz sempre sol? É sempre bom."

E aí a gente inventou o casaco. Ainda bem.



Anita Petry