CHAOS REHEARSALS by Madeleine Stack
150 x 210mm, 96 pages, black and white printing, perfect bound, softcover, 2022
There is never a blank slate for the world to come. The catastrophe and the revolution are never final, everything is practice for the next thing. While rehearsing for chaos we must prepare our mouths and bodies for the many moments in which the sun will cave in. The sirens who sing for it are poets, dykes and Paloma the street performer who wanders the city for a wage. In the underworld there are no saviours or sins or revelations or redemptions, just life processes: birth, growth and the weather. The structures of the state get waterlogged, fatty enough to be melted down and adorned with trinkets to the point of disintegration.
In this collection of poems, bodies splash in the labyrinth and take the edge between their teeth, feet pickling in proteins and last night’s confetti. These poems push the lovers to the extreme of wanting, while their incorruptible belief that delight will win tinkles in their pockets like coins as they approach the gates. The chaos is real. True love, it turns out, is also real.
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