Dear Matthew,
I told you David Lynch talks about DYNAMIC POWER in the video about
transcendental meditation, but that’s wrong. The phrase is DYNAMIC
PEACE. He draws a diagram like a vortex. His handwriting is immaculate.
My friend says Laura Dern’s Nikki Grace/Sue Blue in Inland Empire is the
only David Lynch character to successfully firewalk, and I have to agree. To
firewalk is to enter the dark lodge of the universal mind, to become
immersed in it, enthralled, without becoming warped or destroyed, and to
come out the other side having freed another.
A woman with tears in her eyes is caught in a room with a sickly glow. Laura
Dern enters dayglo green portals, enacts scenes of entrapment, insists on the
female orgasm, opens holes through cigarette burns, bleeds out on the
sidewalk, becomes possessed, rises on heels and lends the woman a key with
her mouth.
Laura Dern disrupts temporality like a black hole named Emily Dickinson.
She walks through a door and time bends around her.
Yrs,
Danika
Dear Matthew,
In your last letter, you asked how I’m doing, and I forgot to answer. Mostly I torment myself in fits of ecstasy. How are you?
You surface like the orange glow around a street lamp,
out of reach. I ride the train. torn up by
disparate places I know I’m shedding skins again when my
bones begin to ache.
How does it feel when a stranger misses you?
In dreams, we become more intimate. You invite me in. I cover your body
with my body. I console your sob-wracked frame. We follow one another
through shifting planes. We sit on a curb, alone in an unnamed
city, waiting. We hold hands carefully.
For a week, playing cards litter my path: King of Hearts. Queen of Wands. A
card that asks, “how long can you hold it?” I bind them in a
book you gave me–
Perhaps I’ll give it back.
Yrs,
Danika
Biographical Statement
Danika Stegeman’s second book, Ablation, was released by 11:11 Press November 1st, 2023. Her first book, Pilot (2020), was published by Spork Press. She’s an assistant editor for Conduit and does light bookkeeping for Fonograf Editions. Along with Jace Brittain, she co-curates the virtual collaborative reading series It’s Copperhead Season. She currently lives in St. Paul, MN. Her website is danikastegeman.com.