Nicole Peyrafitte, Word Drawings

from the daily carnet

Note about the Notebook

I always keep a carnet going, have done so for years. It records shapes, colors, moods of a physical or mental place & gathers language fragments & ideas from poetry readings, films, books…They often trigger text and/or come into my  karstic-action  pieces. The pages reproduced here date from between March 24—May 17, the period of the New York City Covid19 lockdown.

Sui Generis is secular

I couldn’t wait to get out of the oven that baked me

I must stop listening for inaccuracies 

what do we agree on? There is always something.

An apology is not a bargaining tool

anyhow it is time to recalibrate my expectations.

Are animals really looking back at humans?

A human gaze is only a human gaze & don’t think you or I can gaze both ways.

I am neither an animal nor a customer of the apocalypse

but ultimately is it my choice? 

How to archive my feelings?

Implementing soil searching rather than soul searching might be more helpful

reincarnation & resurrection are only wishful thinking

& apocalypse only a perspective.

— Nicole Peyrafitte, Brooklyn Bayridge, June 30 2020

Editor’s note: The last two drawings reproduced here from Peyrafitte’s “carnet” (moving from top down on the page) were created while Nicole listened to the InterRUPTions poetry readings I hosted via Zoom—on April 30 (Erica Hunt) and on May 7th, 2020 (Carla Harryman). Her words cite the incredibly moving lines of both poets.—Laura Hinton