Elena Robidoux has worked to create a raw, authentic view into how every story can be linked to ones introspection.
About the Artwork:
These poems explore Elena Robidoux's shaky familial architecture and how it has shaped her interpersonal relationships. The poems have an interiority to them which aims to depict her fraught self and paralyzing introspection. The revelatory nature of the poems is reinforced by sharp, uncensored imagery.
About the Artist:
Elena Robidoux is a writer of prose poetry and creative nonfiction from Massachusetts. Her work has been featured in The Missing Slate, Metatron, Wu-Wei Fashion Mag, Potluck Magazine and Fog Machine, among others.
Artist Media Links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robi1kenobee/
SEARCHING
running my dimpled hands
along your stubble
a few sloppy slips of the blade you
had made nothing
for dinner except stale cereal
you said
‘we’re out of milk’
you said
‘you don’t know how good you have it’
you said
‘when i was a kid…’
i went in the backyard looking for pinecones.
i couldn’t find any pinecones so
i settled for sticks.
UNTITLED
The parsley is damp in the fridge. Outside engines rev and cumbia blares from the houses next door. It is muggy but I keep the windows shut, the blinds down. The escaping light ribs against my naked body: a topography of curves outlined, made new. Our movements are glacial and soft. I have few desires and fewer aims, but you are one. We unravel one another. And later, you chameleon yourself against my depressed leather couch, eating an English muffin glazed with ruby jam. You look calm, focused. Two Siamese blues stare back as if to say what? Yes, what. What will it take for me to feel secure in this moment, to experience us as a glowing reality, not a dim vestige of memory?
CURED
Dead ivy snakes along a golden wall
like a thousand diverging veins. A
modern-day Robert Frost poem. The
schematics of indecision. Sign reads:
“ACTIVE DOORWAY / NO PARKING.”
I wonder about inactive doorways to buildings
I’ll never enter, to places I’ll never see. I am
the fetus of this brutal winter; desuetude,
trapped potential. Desire is making me sick.
I crave the gnosis of woodland animals. The
intimacy of of a fixed gaze. A halved grapefruit,
incubating in a fridge. Something replicable.
Is my chronic déjà vu symptomatic of a larger pain?
my brain’s attempt to reincarnate itself—to relive
and atone for the bad parts. Self-awareness is
sterile without incentive; I learn the diagnosis,
then refuse treatment. My avoidance is electric.
I spend my days pondering, looking outward.
I live for the milky translucence of dirty ice,
the mystery of an aphotic lake. Limerence
with a stranger. A little letting go.
THERE ARE NEVER ENOUGH COAT HANGERS
I do not know if that means something
as I do not know if my rising sign is what
has made me a blonde and reactionary girl.
I think it meant something in November
when we drove out to the marsh and saw
the seasons fucking—those wet coarse grasses
frozen in ice, like a scorpion in an amber stone.
Not quite fall but not quite winter either.
I want to preserve that in-between phase,
somehow document how purgatory feels.
There is a way to love two sides and hold on,
be unsure. I see nature resisting and I know.
I like the way “blood-orange” looks and sounds.
Usually it is one or the other. When they took you
away I heard Chopin and screeching bats. Both.
I am learning what it means to say yes
while believing no. I suffocate instinct,
recall brick and pansies. White wine. Midnight.
I feel my pulse in all the wrong places:
Groin. Temple. Back left knee.
Blue and red lights can be beautiful
on the right day, in the right context.