Machine Project

Please join us on Sunday November 18th at 5pm for a reading by new poet friend Dorothea Lasky and a music performance by the lovely Laura Steenberge.

(Laura Steenberge at High Energy Constructs)

–> Listen to Laura Steenberge play with Emily Lacy at the West Hollywood Book Fair

excerpt from “Whatever You Paid for That Sweater It was Worth It”
by Dorothea Lasky

Be scared of yourself
The real self
Is very scary.
It is a man
But more importantly
The man is tall.

“Intimacy”
by Dorothea Lasky

Intimacy is a braggart.
Intimacy you are a braggart
Ultimately a braggart
And no joy in bragging
Your lips to mine, like hot water.
The hot water does not burn me
It makes a soup.
Your heart is a soup
The sun is heating your heart
I kiss you, I kiss your heart.
Ultimately you are not intimacy
And in kissing you, I am not intimate with anything
But my own demise, which is the demise
Of forests and palm trees and such
And such the birds that open their heads
On the flat plains of the sun.
“This is my face!” the sun says
And the birds cry and weep and cuddle.
“We are so sorry” they say
“We did not realize this was your face.”

Schizophrenia, excerpted from the poem “Ten Lives of Mental Illness”
by Dorothea Lasky

A bunny came to my room and gave me a wish. He was actually part bunny and part man. He had waited for a new head but no one could find him one. His head was enormously large. He has walked into my room and smarted his head on the ceiling. I am all head I said and showed him I had no legs. He smiled and rubbed my tummy with a smooth washcloth and then a coarse one. There was nothing new in the world there at that moment and I assure you there is nothing new now either.