One Poem by Julianne Neely

Tarsila do Amaral, “Composição (Figura só) (Composition [Lonely Figure])” (1930), oil on canvas (photo by Elisa Wouk Almino/Hyperallergic)

LANDSCAPE WITHOUT FORM

critical theory of an extensible self
they placed me in the meadow and so I was in the meadow

woman producing
gender affecting

forming the basis for much poetry

I think riding a horse is idiotic, sue me

in order to assert transcendence
the romantic poet
the romantic  poe
t the romantic po
et the romantic p
oet  the romantic
poet  the romanti
c poet the romant
ic poet the roman
tic poet the  roma
ntic poet the rom
antic poet the  ro
mantic poet the r
omantic poet  the
romantic poet  th
e romantic poet t
he romantic poet

female figure who inhabits

I strangle myself with my own hair

I rearrange my body

recuperating the love of man through the love of nature, shut up

I do not want to be your wife

an abstract but unassailable force
he desires

how different is our mourning

the speaker stands
the speaker is experienced

I memorized the slaughter

I was acculturated and socialized

I have been a disappointment,
of affection,
of primitiveness,

I fail to read the lyric
I fail to read  the lyri
c I fail to read the lyr
ic I fail to read the ly
ric I fail to read the l
yric I fail to read the
lyric I fail to  read th
e lyric I fail to read t
he lyric I fail to read
the lyric I  fail to rea
d the lyric I fail to re
ad the lyric I fail to r
ead the  lyric I fail to
read the  lyric I fail t
o read the lyric I  fail
to read the  lyric I fai
l to read the lyric I fa
il to read the lyric I f
ail to read the lyric I
fail to read the   lyric

*     *     *

Julianne Neely received her MFA degree from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, where she received the Truman Capote Fellowship, the 2017 John Logan Poetry Prize, and a Schupes Prize for Poetry. Her writing has been published in VIDA, The Rumpus, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Iowa Review, and more. Her chapbook The Body Beside Herself is out now from Slope Editions.