Anti Lethal Gravity & Team Jennifer: Two poems by Jordana Bragg.

Concentrating on the metaphysics of love and loss; Bragg's multi-disciplinary practice spans writing, curation, live performance, still and moving image.   Currently based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Bragg is co-founder and a current facilitator of the Artist Run Initiative MEANWHILE. Contact - jordanabragg94@gmail.com

​Anti-Gravity Lethal

​​And I can highly recommend the end
I lost my life poolside
Hard white ceramic tile squares
Together by dark blue
By a turquoise detail to die for
A crystal chandelier suspended by nothing but capital and a necessary belief in Teenage
Fantasy
In opulence and opal
Anti-Gravity Lethal
And there is more to beauty than revering it
Don't you know
It is as trustworthy
As truthful as anything
My vision clears every time I see anything
Now we walk the hounds of love out-front
It does not have to be beautiful
Beauty is a fact of life among many others
But everything is more expensive and manufactured for less above a broken neck
And nothing will ever be the new black
Not even hot pink against a bright blue sky
A particular polishing compound
Wait go back
I wasn’t listening
What does sensitivity really get me
Wait go back
I wasn't listening
Only projecting
The pressure to the knee was by far the worst part
Blood pooling by my mother’s side
And she speaks to me nightly
Do they know
Who are they to throw you
Who sent you here
A fate worse than death is being caught in the wrong shade of red
A personality so last season it only serves to be blushing
The wrong shade of red
And describe it as best you can
A pressure against the chest like a hammer
Yes, like a full tool case against the brain
Risking an aneurysm and an epileptic fit just to be here
It's not a bad place it's a scared place
And you came here to hide from 360 degrees
Fears in 3D
Honey, I think you better go home
I can see your two-dimensional worldview all the way from over here
And run to religion as if it were forsaken
Until you can find somewhere to hide from 360 degrees inside a 3D structure
And tell the cops to stop bending her arm back like that
Tell them to stop
They won't listen to me
Fine, find someone here that they will listen to
Tell them to stop
Wait go back
A particular polishing compound
What does sensitivity really get me

Team Jennifer

​
​Just mirror it back to me
Mirror it back to me
Or mirror me back to me
Good god give me something
Anything to work with
 
And daylight breaks, I know
You think. Oh, I couldn't possibly
I know, you do the impossible every day
Every day since you realised daylight does not belong to anyone in particular
 
But midnight does
I am midnight at your most alone
And your 1am, 2am, 3am, 4am
Could be your daybreak breakdown
I am darling, don’t think for one second that I won’t
 
And the room starts to spin, and I think JFK me[i]. Honestly, I’d rather
And my condition is I see so clearly,
I see too clearly, so full of intentional action
And you are the angle I see from,
The horizon line of my eye is in your hips as I bend you over
 
And “I don’t get heartbreak because I don’t get heartbroken” [ii]
 
The new convenience of abandonment
Who are you in debt to Daddy
React to me
 
Marina’s performances allow her to pre-empt the disaster that experience has taught her to expect[iii]
 
Now I'm bleeding on the people, I forgot that I’ve still got an open gash[iv]
 
And practically
There are only so many jokes to be made before heartbreak sets you a new reality
You have one second to decide
I can only hope you catch the kind like rapture, not Rigor mortis
The worst part is it doesn’t even end you
Heartbreak requires a Horror Whatever mentality
 
At your expense
I keep trying to paint a pane
A stained-glass window between you and new reality
Why reserve rose tinted for pleasure
It’s a very expensive thing to do
 
I consider myself limitless
Living in a superimposed state of being
Relentless
 
Full of the kind of things you like
And I want to win prizes
The kind no one can recognise directly because I’m always sitting sideways ready to turn away
 
And how fucking dare you
Your audacity proves nothing other than your incapacity to care for yourself
And believing you have no one is a very particular sensitivity isn’t it
 
Brad and Angelina starring in a film together as a married couple who want to kill each other
 
Jane Smith asking John Smith “Still Alive, Baby?” after firing three shots at him
 
Brangelina is dead
 
And there were never any TEAM BRAD t-shirts
 
And gloves off claws out
 
Brad is a Sagittarius, Angelina is a Gemini and Jennifer is an Aquarius. So that whole thing makes complete sense, an earth sign wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near that explosion  
 
And Madonna is a Leo and Britney is a Sagittarius and onstage at the 2003 Video Music Awards they pashed while Christina (a Sagittarius) watched. So that whole thing makes complete sense, an earth sign wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere near that explosion
 
And no mercy
Cars drive by a bloodstream
And I’m too busy to be concerned
Pretending to be Morticia Addams just for fun

​[i] Tinashe (2018). No Drama, Joyride Album. [Youtube] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vAh7jTAkCKc. RCA RecordsPresident
John F. Kennedy - assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. November 22, 1963.
​[ii] Extracted quote 13.11.18 with Priscilla Howe [Facetime] 
[iii] Fischer, J (2018). Psychoanalyst meets Marina Abramović. SCHEIDEGGER AND SPIESS 
[iv] Smith, J (2017). Fallen, SYRE Album. [YouTube] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fof9lHaApXc. MSFTS Music and Roc Nation
 

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