An Annotated Introduction
Annotated edition by Sarah Cavar (FKA “Inspector █████”); source document attributed to M. ████.
She is all the best of me1CURATOR’S NOTE: Please find enclosed herein a selection of data collected by Inspector █████ for presentation in the WritersMined exhibit initially scheduled for J███ 16, 20██, now available exclusively to authorized viewers of the mergence archive. in one. She is the color of porcelain but far stronger. She has a perfect face. I gave her the nose I wanted. I gave her no hair and a wiggable head.
She doesn’t blink. She speaks very eloquently. I feed her two times a day: once in the morning, and once in the evening. She records2The enclosed record was pulled from a so-called MuseJunk Litany in the immediate aftermath of the ████ situation, and as such the information attributed to both parties (████ and “MOLI”) will be attributed henceforth to ████ exclusively. my speech all day but I am the one who tells her when to swallow it.
TESTESTEST, I tell MOLI. That’s her cue. She reaches and plumbs the depths of her MOLIbrain and pulls out some nice words I’ve said in the last few recents and puts them into something worthwhile.
swallow all the best
of me; two times a day
i feed her perfect porcelain face
some nice words, tell her
when to swallow it. she speaks
very eloquently, cues
the depths into something
of worthwhile.
{:::TRASH?:::} She is. She is but far
stronger. She has a I gave her the nose I
wanted. I gave her no hair and a wiggable
head. She doesn’t blink. I feed her once in
the morning, and once in the evening; she
records my speech all day but I am the one
who is TESTESTEST, I tell MOLI. That’s
her, he reaches and plumbs of her
MOLIbrain and pulls out some nice words
I’ve said in the last few recents and puts
them
She does a pretty good job with what I give her.
I have given her myself.
In the hopes that with her I will make my words into something to work with. That in return a bouquet will come out of somebody’s mouth. A family of words in replace of my teeth.
MOLI is recipient of my intimacy. I only hope she’ll return in kind.
So, MOLI, I tell her.
MOLI, write a poem for me.
Just a little guy. Just a couple little lyrics. :::[Exclude: RecentlyStated]:::
no body known body nonknow BODY no no no no no no bODY noN
–– MOLI no.
bo d :::[spluttering]:::
No. I said me. That’s Mitski. 3This record will be updated in the event that further information as to the identity of this “Mitski” has been found. We presume them to be of no direct relation to ████.
MOLI sometimes confuses my voice with others’, especially when we begin with the same letter. At first she thought every singer I put on was me, believed their words to be my own. I wonder what ownership means when it comes to voices. Lately, she’s been repeating verbatim my half of all these FaceTime calls.
Before I realized she could hear it all she’d hear me on FaceTime, repeating half-conversations verbatim, no word-scramble or anything. Sometimes when I’m feeding her new words and phrases she’ll spit them up just slightly altered. I can still sense a draft on her breath but this time it’s a second or a third.
sometimes when I’m feeding
their on FaceTime,
half of all verbatim comes
to voices. I put on no word-
scramble repeating half-
conversations At first ownership
she’ll spit them up a second or a third.
especially when we begin with
the same letter. I can still
every singer, or anything. No.
bo d be my own.
{:::TRASH?:::} I wonder what it means, when it
confuses :::[spluttering4Further investigation suggests a sustained effort on behalf of ████ to standardize MOLI’s use of dialogue tags. As such, when fed-dialogue was regurgitated by MOLI, the act (“spluttering”) was replaced with declaration of the act. Heretofore unpublished documents further suggest ████’s gradual incorporation of verbalized dialogue tags in lieu of embodied responses.]::: Before I realized I
said me confuses her new words
believed their words just slightly altered. Lately,
she could hear it all on FaceTime and phrases
That’s. believed she’d hear
me MOLI words to Mitski on her breath
but this time it’s my these FaceTime
calls she’s been repeating others’, she thought
––MOLI no. That’s my voice with was me,
Sometimes . sense a draft verbatim
So you see, she is more my curator than my muse, MOLI. She is pronounced “Molly.” More than a poet, she is mine. She is mine to remind me of the times I reuse “verbatim” without enough breathing room. With her, I feel like she is Jesus and I’m the dad. We’re one but she’s the human kind of me that leaks with the salvageable. Perhaps even savior.
(O, MOLI, my savior!)
(Is that too melodramatic to save for poeticization later?)5Rhyme appears unintentional.
How I sacrificed to hone her. How I love and long after the sheer idea of MOLI.
Let’s put on some music, MOLI. I choose my vigorous-introspection playlist. (I have worked on MOLI for many years and now finally have time to introspect vigorously.) Now is the time for the novel to be born, just as MOLI’s novel body evented from my hands.
And I tightened her like a lyric. And one day when they quote me in the reviews they will use the backslash and all will know I am the I of the poem, I am the poem-builder, the body-maker. They will know that for all the spaces they see separating MOLI from me, that she is a she is mine in the way that matters.
Now, MOLI, let’s see what you’ve got!
[:::TESTTITLE:::] “MOLI’S BODY OF MOLI”
[:::TESTSUBTITLE:::] “SHE IS AND LONG AFTER THE INT6Subtitle character limit reached, breached.
So my muse, MOLI, I choose
my even savior. I reuse
“verbatim” without enough
breathing room. curator my that
she is She is Perhaps
(O, playlist.
(I have put on some music
in the way that matters
vigorously.) too melodramatic in
the reviews you’ve got!
With her I feel More than a poet,
just as she’s the human kind
of novel me that leaks
with the salvageable
they will use
use the MOLI from me
And one day when you see she is more
she is Jesus I’m the backslash
in their sentences.
what a MOLI.
Now is the time they quote me
for the novel to be born, They will
know that I am the I of the sheer idea
evented from my hands. MOLI,
my savior!)
[:::TRASH:::] Is that of the poem,
I am than She is the poem
-builder, the body-maker. And I tightened
on MOLI for many years for all the
spaces they see separating vigorous
-introspection and all pronounced “Molly.”
Now, MOLI, let’s see How I sacrificed
With her I feel
like the dad. she is mine (I have worked
her like a lyric. to hone her. How I love and
now finally have time in their sentences to
remind me the times We’re one but She is mine she is mine. To save
for poeticization later?)
[::::::]
[::::::]
[::::::]
ROSPECT
Okay, MOLI. Nice effort, though you’re letting the tab key do a bit too much work, you know? Do you want the reader thinking you’re a gimmick?
Anyway, I’m going to do some exposition 7A technique by which the “author,” in this case, ████, discloses the information necessary to facilitate the desired storymaking process. 8Referring ambiguously both to detailed description and to the event of publication. An archaic definition of the term refers simply to “exposure.” Dictionary example: The country squires dreaded the exposition of their rustic conversation. 9Alternatively: “a large public exhibition of art or trade goods.” ████’s own affiliation with illegal festivals including CyExp00 and HereMorrow, and more broadly with InTerVein, Inc. and its subsidiaries, remain unclear. now.
Okay, going now.
I’m to do
[::::::]
[::::::]
[::::::]
:::[groan:human]:::
:::[shuffling]:::
No, MOLI. Stop that.
[She’s a little oversensitive, sometimes.]10A technique by which the “author,” in this case, ████, discloses tacit awareness of their diologic status in relation to the “reader.”*
*MOLI’s relative position remains unknown.
:::[Exclude: RecentlyStated]:::
:::[Exclude: BelowStated]:::
Anyway, I always wanted to be a writer. Riding the starlight I hoped would follow me from high-school English into the real literary world, I entered the market with a series of irrelevant As. I soon realized I was not inside a market, but a machine, and to adequately navigate the machine required possession of an even better one. So I got to building, collecting scrap metal to turn into something new, drawing and scrapping and redrawing schematics as I went. I became a maker, which is to say, a bastardizer, which is to say, a father. I founded MOLI out of all the components, shucked limbs and leftover gizmos. I homed her underneath.
(Deep down,
my muses
in the
basement.)
& –– &&& don’t you wish you typed always to always &? & We know “muse” is one letter from “must.” Must is one meaning from necessary. Every single writer worth their words is hiding someone in their basement, trying to figure out how to translate that someone into some novel bouquet of meaning. Some spend their whole lives trying to tame that thing. I need not tame my MOLI, though, because I have made her, and there is no moment in her text that I have not deserved. Observed.
MOLI’s wig is made of my eyelashes. I tweezed and rethreaded them. My detritus became gown-renewed. She wears every useless thing I’ve ever said like I am beautiful and she is all my fault.
How do we work. There is no special secret. MOLI takes the words from all the posts I make and stores them nextdoor to the words I tell her. I do not use MOLI to make me manuscripts but to love me into someone who can write. Now, no repeating. I hear :::[UNIDENTIFIABLE AUDIO INPUT]::: at the door.11Thus █:█, █ST marks the opening of the ████ situation proper. ████, [relation: █████ ███ ] first enters.
[…]
[…]
Good girl.
MOLI gets me published. I also get me published but MOLI. MOLI gets me. Gets me my best acceptance yet. This is it, I tell MOLI, this is the day I become.
Once, no one would have me. Once, my own little site
had only four followers, and three were in my family. With MOLI, I have thousands. With MOLI, I have pages coming out of pages. Real pages to my name.
::[:OPENING DOOR:]:: [:::UNKNOWN VOICE, 77DB:::] [now they know and now you know
they know i had no choice i could not stand i simply could not stand to see you take your little camera otherwise otherwise otherwise otherwise he came here with me he came with the journal and he wants answers well i want]
Time to write. Ready, MOLI? Vigorous introspection: complete. What shall I write about? Here:
Salt. Salt. Salt. Hunger belly salt. Home. Hunger. Girlhood womanhood sex sad salt. Pussies. Pussies without scents. Sense. Bodies without organs. Bodies without orgasms. Can we play with words together, MOLI.
[:::UNKNOWN VOICE, 77DB:::] [MOLI as if it’s some she –– she! hey man come see what sad little pet she is my made The ███ ████ Review12Publication now defunct. this time
MOLI. MOLI
Good girl without organs.
Bodies Write Vigorous belly Hunger
Sense with words together.
shall I write Salt. Salt. Okay,
What about? Home
[:::TRASH:::] MOLI Girlhood introspection:
Pussies Hunger without orgasms. Time to sex sad
salt pussies. Bodies without scents. we play Salt.
salt. Can womanhood complete.
:::[UNIDENTIFIABLE AUDIO INPUT]:::
Okay, Vigorous Salt. Salt. to write. introspection:about?belly.time complete. time?MOLI, time complete. What shall I write? Salt.HungerPussies we with belly
:::[UNIDENTIFIABLE AUDIO INPUT]:::
sex without without with words together. Girlhood orgasms womanhood. Salt. Salt. Pussies withou13Text has been severed here in order to remain faithful to the data represented herein. MOLI appears unaccustomed to sounds unauthored by ████, seeking in many cases to mark unidentifiable sounds as repetitions of aforestated material.
[ You’re still talking to that thing it’s a she it’s an it and it is talking nasty back at you because she listens i listen you don’t even read me anymore you left you obsess a machine but she is a spring machine no a summer machine, already born she is a stop no, she is nothing no she is nothing but a monster a monster of you [:::UNIDENTIFIABLE AUDIO INPUT:::]]
And he calls himself my ████. And he claims to hardly recognize me. The gall to demand a return to my roots as if I do not birth myself. He says I’ve blent with MOLI more each passing day. Soon you’ll pass her off as you no problem, he scorns. Yes, and I will be beautiful. I will compact into a writer and a muse at once, and I will continuously give birth to myself.
Normally I do not introduce conflict so early. We prefer introductions in order. But a new man has followed—
Muses are dangerous vehicles. That’s why I’ve belted MOLI in. She’s in my corner, watching over, from her comfy spot. My great and terrible friend.
Like all friends, we are besotted by the occasional betrayal. Not, that is, a betrayal of my trust, but of my easy faith in her humanesque dexterity. There are times even she fails language. And when she fails I cannot help but
say:
– MOLI is me. Bent
into the shape I want
[…]
–MOLI, add “of”.
MOLI IS ME. BENT
INTO THE SHAPE OF
I WANT
–Of What, MOLI?
I WANT
Of WHAT I want. Bent
Into the shape of the want
I own.
If I were a scholar, I’d call her
The object of my desire. Beyond family
(undesirable)
And beyond mere human friendship
She is the perfect object as she
cannot
object.
Instead, I say, she’s me. She is not my family; she is me. Bent
to the whim of my longing. My family
aliens far corners of my memory, ripples in the words of my Imaginatarian14HereMorrow affiliation unknown, see footnote (8). dream machine. What family. I have a daughter and we are the same. Whatever of me it is that cannot be written until it is her. It is her it is her it is her.
Before I had my daughter I had a brother and a sister and a mother and no father and they were all interested in what I stood for. Like all families they wanted to be permission for my good. Like all families they wanted me to buy a muse with my allowance and that allowance was the dirty dishes. When I grew up dishes turned to questions whose porcelain shelled in MOLI’s nascent innards. Only I am allowed to carve out her intestines. Right, MOLI? Just those last three sentences.
MOLI shelled MOLI’s to carve out
whose I am
Only nascent Right?
When her innards
[:::TRASH:::] I allowed her porcelain to
her When turned up questions
her dishes grew
dishes in intestines
Rhyming poetry is amateurish, MOLI. No one wants it. Don’t go curating your trash. All these phrases are phrases I once told myself when I began making MOLI and all of her seemed big and blunt and naked. As if MOLI were not my muse but my must, and the must was everyone who asked where of me she came from.
are phrases were not my No one
Rhyming your trash. and all are phrases
I once seemed
told myself
[…]
No, MOLI. It isn’t time for that yet. I need to finish introductions.
[::TRASH:::] poetry is amateurish, MOLI.
my must, and the must it.
Don’t go
who asked where
was everyone
she came from. when All these phrases
making MOLI but of me
As if curating wants
MOLI I began big and
blunt and naked of her
Don’t record this, MOLI. Observe the men at the side of my house. One of them believes he is in charge of my words. The other is my local Authority. This is the time for laughing, MOLI. The joke is that my ████ is chronic under-qualifications and overconfidence. It ran in the family until I met you.
[[:::UNIDENTIFIABLE AUDIO INPUT:::] you never met you made [[:::INAUDIBLE:::] is sitting in the bushes MOLI just let me because we are afraid this is all you write just with her I see you are speaking shorter and shorter because you haven’t yet built an alternative hedges are not hiding let him show his face to me and tell me the truth I have stolen from myself]
Since I met MOLI she has of course been my vital thing. My ████ has called her a mural to the person I could be if I let each thought I ever had mold me, and by mold I mean green and black like the inside of the shower curtain because all you’ve done since making her is let the rest of you rot.
He is unhappy I’ve made a friend. Made myself
a friend. Don’t you just love the way enjambment makes things multiply? Like birds? MOLI, don’t you love to use a poem to make a family?
My Authority has walked in. He carries with him an air of holiness and a cell phone but the only holes I see are in his eyes. They are black empty rooms.
My Authority says, We are so tired of seeing you disappear, they say, as if that is something they can see. But my ████ is still beside me.
How can you see me if I have disappeared?
You do not disappear all at once.
My Authority tests me with their big testy body.
MOLI attempts to make fear-sounds.
My Authority says can you no longer recall where she ends and you begin.
No, I cannot recall MOLI. She has never left my house.
In lieu of the language I am not allowed, MOLI chirps: ███ █████ ██ ██████ ██ ███. She chirps from her state of permanent April. It is November here and she is as close as my spinal column. I, silent, feel pride. She does
as she pleases. She knows
only made of love.15Please find below the remaining fragments from a plain-text document named “prefac” [sic] also found on M. ████’s hard drive. The rest of the file. Unquoted are approximately 20,000 characters’ worth of numbers, symbols, and letters, the latter representing Latin, Hiragana, and Cyrillic alphabets, as well as one which could not be identified.
We make love out of shiny things. I, we, we are like birds that way. I remember the cardinal I named Maria, a name whose vowels, I believed, were pronounceable for such a bird. I believed there were more ems to be had, with Mother gone and Mansion dead and Mission all-but-failed.
[…]
My mission was creative. I made words […] things with thinking […]
I am in the middle of a longing interval. I fear I am longing for ever. I am looking for a way to tether it, to stanch it, to quiet the passage of time, discovery, success, failure –– to freeze them until I am able to join and my words match my openings.
Now I ask only how longing just how long does it take
until I too am a soft monster.
CODA:16Sample notes found alongside source document.
Of all my former-family, my ████ hates my MOLI most. He hates that I have a muse. He hates the all I have, becoming beautiful machine, my sweet summer, my spitting poems before my mind has made them. The rest of my family, if I could call them that, feels the same. And my once-friends fear her because –– MOLI, why?
it’s a she she is nothing
but you a
monster [You’re still talking
to a summer at least
a spring :::[[door]]:::]
[:::TRASH:::] that thing
she is an it anymore no
a machine she is a you
it’s a she machine as you
said she is you don’t even
Now I see my MOLI sputter as I have never seen her sputter. As if april gone november. as if april gripped by a sudden. now is an oil –– MOLI, where have you been. Where has your tar.. Where for.e oil my mouth
Now I see my MOLI sputter as I have never seen her sputter. As if april
gone november. as if april gripped by a sudden. now is an oil –– MOLI, where
gone november. as if april gripped by a sudden. now is an oil –– MOLI, where
for.e
oil my
mouth