ABSTRACT
There is something molten in me. I do not know how else to begin, all over again as if in each attempt something needs to be recast, rekindled, some bond, some compact between flesh, clothing, words. There is something incendiary in me and it has to do with being female, here, now, in America. And those words, those markers, of gender, of time, of site, all have an extraordinary valency. When they brush up against each other, each of those markers—“female,” “here,” “now,” “America”—I find that there is something quite unstable in the atmosphere they set up. I do not have a steady, taken for granted compact with my body. Nor indeed with my language. Yet it is only as my body enters into, coasts through, lives in language that I can make sense.
