The Test

Clio Soiffer

​​

​

shirt peeling off
me not unlike the skin
of a wet potato

​

chlorine smell! endless
and sudden

​

stomach cupped 
in my hands not 
unlike a sick dog

​

stale light, cupboardlike

​

water is meant to move, I 
tell myself

​

body fluorescent
body damp, body blue

​

body unlike boy
but like nothing else

​

breath insists
stubbornly 
on itself

​

body is a hole
in the world

​

everyone watch! to see
what it fills
 

​​

​​

​​

​​​​​

​​

​​

​​​

Unprompted

Clio Soiffer

​​

​

line!
the Poet aims a punch
square in the yaw
of the Enemy——the Enemy being

​

simply the You that doesn't write.

​

a call inside the House.

​

a Lecture, precisely
30 minutes long, 5 topics
each one of them Something
you've known since before

​

you were born. a display
of pure Context and no
particular interest. a reality
shown once or twice,
catching the Light.

​

you are What you think.

​

You are not your notes app.

​

it's you, Yes
singing in the confessional booth
(even though you've heard they don't
really use Those anymore,
they confess Face to Face, which to you
sounds a little too much like Therapy) but the Fist

​

in your throat unbuckles nonetheless, becomes
insatiable, a weedwhacker
set loose upon 
Memory and Language and Whatever
Else you've ever done.
 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​