#natalie mesnard

[lifeinpoetry]

My whole life has been a hologram. / A history of body as bangled, begging / hand.

— Natalie Mesnard, from "Projection in Retrograde,” We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, eds. Andrea Abi-Karam & Kay Gabriel

[alarmalade]

Projection in Retrograde

Scorpio, it’s time for contemplation. Hear this: my life has been a hologram. History has no mirror but stars misaligned, a thousand tessellated lichens and I have been trying to read them. I admit, a peculiar astrology: girl, boy, body as brown moth come to rest in the lee of an I. Magnetism is forecast. You may force a silk rose through one eye of the 3D moving image. And when Justin Timberlake brings sexy back at summer’s bravura performance, some rosé-all-day DIY backyard wedding you may—no, you will—go get down. Say of the synth pink thread coming through the I it’s made of stone. Stone from which hangs stones, grave markers wearing tessellated lichens. The pattern gets so misaligned. Please, Scorpio, read this horoscope sober as a moth. My whole life has been a hologram. A history of body as bangled, begging hand. But you, you’re down to reflect on what you’re transmitting, aren’t you? Or what did you mean when, leaving advice in the guestbook that evening, drunk on your own stars, notion of goodbye you wrote, wear each other’s clothes?

"Projection in Retrograde" by Natalie Mesnard, from We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (2020).