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evaalterpoet.bsky.social
eva alter
@evaalterpoet.bsky.social
28 followers 39 following 5 posts
my brain is a forest my poems are maps that index encrypt & resurrect
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evaalterpoet.bsky.social
twin poems

"Passenger" in @maudlinhouse.bsky.social (maudlinhouse.net/passenger/)

"Kismet" in Eulogy Press
(www.eulogy.press/kismet)
Passenger by Eva Alter At fourteen, acutely and newly voiceless I became preoccupied with the basking shark. From an animal family typecast as vicious and soulless and yet itself chiefly passive, it is a creature of pilgrimage, traveling far and slow with the brackish seasons and tides. How analeptic, I thought, to drift from place to place without affliction or care. At fourteen, the basking shark’s liminal, perpetual fate as a simple tourist on this Earth, its life predetermined as transient, stirred my jealousy and fascination. Enduring what felt at that age like limitless suffering, I imagined myself drifting in the vast seawater for eternity, thoughts aimless and opaque, so close to oblivion— yet still entirely corporeal and spirited. Little to think about, little to harm me. Just that endless and boundless ocean. Open and certain as a void. Kismet by Eva Alter “because a woman’s body is a grave;” Dedication to Hunger, Louise Glück I learned how to do it at fourteen, that brutal undoing of desire— a violent purification ritual, my own; to rid myself of my person, temporarily yet entirely [to rid myself of my soul’s detritus] that porcelain door going nowhere but down down down. I knew I was septic. Knew my skin had been made into rot [knew I had to bear it anyway] and decided to barter my fate sacrificing myself to that chasm of dreck. Once became dozens became thousands each time an unwitting move in some cosmic chess match against God’s magistrate; total expiration the loser’s reward.
March 29, 2025 at 2:53 PM