Christina Vega-Westhoff : My small press writing day:

Would look like an amalgamation of time honored tellings

Without marking what is done or acknowledged seems like not a thing

And yet it is more than I we know

Looks like mothering feeding reading while feeding in sleep time on phone scroll old articles loaded weeks before or all the tabs open so computer put to sleep because the trail to follow should be preserved what marks this day as opposed to that

To go into

Looks like I am away for some time so I have the option that might mean typing and finally

reading what was written when during nap during night wake (mine) during

Into the book I imagine translating        the poem I am directed to translate into trapeze

Yet     I have tried to make it text is it dismissive                   or complementary

Responses to teaching possibilities                   weighing what is worth personal time                 when none will pay for much of anything certainly not ER visit          when will we see the bill for that

To write into gap    intuit to know when the visit is too long when the eye

is fluttering in a way that says a nap is welcome thought in this timeframe

This is to be was to be and it’s how a response flounders thunders in to

towards liminality    asi mi vida    asi es asi

I spend part of the day around the kitchen inviting help in the way of lids opening

pouring and toweling

I write a letter to someone detained

I imagine the lesson plan   and the activity       and the mobile

I imagine the curated show

I am interrupted in imagination   after movement (which I prioritize internal external theft)

design           imagine the processing   and follow through   to be in dialogue

I am collaging                  a walk in a carrier    a bark scraping clean

C c c             out of self     what would show imagine

this throb      the creature in withdrawal           mustard museum       seek    smell

          fortitude       quest beyond          creek cut in           underground river (ing)

sing              force 

Christina Vega-Westhoff is a poet, translator, aerialist, and teaching artist. She is the author of Suelo Tide Cement, which won the 2017 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared recently in Emergency INDEX, Words Without Borders, Best American Experimental Writing, and P-Queue.