2024 Opening Performance

Poetry Reading by Kai Butterfield. 

suddenly, in its trembling,
I remark my hand,
taken for granted in the unceasing activity of my work.

trembling now,
my hand has made itself seen,
emerging from the blur of my labours to reveal a swelling at the joints of fingers, wrist,
a brittleness of the nails,
a hot and reddened palm.

I see now that the trembling hand hesitates before it grasps,
as it has been changed,
fatigued by that grasping.
it refuses to grasp, if only for a moment,
to delay the repetitive and quotidian work of capture.

if this grasp is the act of knowing,
then everything I have come to know has been measured by a closed fist,
even you, my friend,
I have come to know even you by this, my foreclosing hand,
palm, numb, bruised,
overwrought with feeling,
how can I discern you by this hand if not to grasp you firmly?
learning your form by its sharp pressure on my insensible flesh,
and by the faint imprint that you leave behind.
such is the nature of grasping.

I collapse you like that
I obscure you like that,
made absent behind my fingers,
disappeared into the hold of my palm,
I nearly change your form,
I nearly break your body down,
in that suffocating enclosure that I have named understanding,
but you rename trap,
vise,
your words,
gasped,
breathlessly,
scraping up, out,
from an airway
constricted by my holding.

never again can I offer you an open-handed greeting,
that is not haunted by closure.

there must be something else for us,
god, there must be a relation beyond possession,
a repurposing of the hand,
for I cannot risk you any longer, cannot risk us,
I cannot risk what we could be to one another if I allowed you to elude me in your complexity,
If I give up the pursuit of you, motivated by the prospect of capture, grasp,
I must give up this brutal mode of understanding,
so that the hand
might lay down its ways and learn to hold anew.

may the hand relearn the practices of the body,
may the hand relearn the gentle planes of the cheek,
may the hand relearn the rise and recession of the chest,
the shallow cupping of collarbone,
the yielding of teeth and lips to breath,

may I seek you like that?
may I seek you softly,
when next we meet?