UNTITLED

< you gave me the passwords, time wrapped in a gauze,

the regular prescriptions and a serving disc >

I am the chosen one, the carer, the alien Ιφιγέnia,

the hard daughter who neither sees nor invent dreams

I If Ἰφι

γε  ιγ

ig  If

Ἰφιg

Is this the carer’s hagiography? Was she insomniac before turning into an echo,

transmitting orders to herself, settling for the chapter-language, the not-me language,

the rants on the train to the Wound Rehabilitation Center (KAT)?

< If I tell you to write it’s because you’re becoming an empty thing >

You wait for them to cut you open, to stitch you together     You wait for the surgeon to retouch you     They go into the operating room with their smartphones as if they were electricians     Electrician-cum-surgeon     They put their gloves so as to earn their keep

Explain to me, yeah, yeah, because I don’t understand

to work for dystopia one needs to cut the instructions into irregular shapes,

I say instructions when what I mean is a maze of ties and missing links

I as in, the daughters-imposters always damage their spines and wrists

If as in, at the wrong time

Ἰφι as in, dystopia treats me/you like shit

γε as in, language accelerates towards its end

dystopia is an event hospital where pigeons walk under the beds

the closer I get, the more indebted I feel

dystopia comes full circle

< I need to care for

more than one; past caring about the dosage, the length of treatment, during, my desert, what affects chemicals in the brain, my destroyer, and body hydration, blood clots, drug interactions, my calendar, what controls and reduces, my tongue, my animal thinking, the heart’s upper chambers, associated with diarrhea, in the chest, in the intestinal tract, my sentence, and prevention, and concurrent,

fast pounding depression >

< also pull them out, your genes, your unisex crystal glasses,

the dark ghosting marks of auto-fiction on the walls >

< I love you >

< But you don’t like me >

< It doesn’t matter >

the moment is anarchic, a diary in pieces,

carers give their names to thick soups

and feeding tubes, nail cutters,

used hospital sheets and curtains

Dimitra Ioannou experiments with narrative or anti-narrative forms in various media (language, photography, publications). Her poems are widely published and she is the author of the chapbook Electric Sarcasm (Ugly Duckling Presse) and the experimental novella Soy Sea (Futura, Athens). She has exhibited her visual poems and photos in solo and group shows in Greece. She is the publisher of A) GLIMPSE) OF) press, coeditor of the Manual of Pirates Languages brossura, and runs experimental writing workshops called textlab.