JESSICA LASER
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HALF WARNED HALF ARMED
There are two mortal coils:
One you shuffle off to live,
To wake in a world of your own making,
A world before childhood, from sleep.
Heaven sent you a virtue.
Is it contagious
Or is it consciousness
Whose coarse flame does this to my ash?
I wanted to remember everything
I came in the room to do
But as I came in the room to
I forgot.
EXCHANGE VALUE
What if I said
Two wrongs don’t make a right
Is the most important line of language
In history, and that history
Repeats conditions
That lead to the necessity
Of that line
What if I said that
And what if I said that
Two wrongs don’t make a right
Is the only line of language too simple
To understand
I’ve done you two
You’ve done me four
To make it up I’d have to
Wrong you twice more
But it is my right to
Biographical Statement
Jessica Laser is the author of Planet Drill (Futurepoem Books, 2022) and Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides (Letter Machine Editions, 2019).