FROM MIDTRIBULATION—

The Visions of Emilie Lafleur

Discordia does not, it turns out, hate everything. Every other week, we share a piece of new or gently-used work from an artist who's earned our respect.

There is art that moves us, and there is art that moves with us. This is Fellow Travellers.

---

FROM MIDTRIBULATION—

THE NEW DAY IS REPLACED BY ANALYSIS ALONE

We invent a theory of ending

Ending in what

If it isn’t a calendar, what is it

This wisdom is soft and fiercer than

Anything imaginable


AS A RESULT WE THINK LONG AND HARD AND

Lose some futures

They must be wrong but remain irresistible

If catastrophe is unjust, change it

Think hard instead about

The wetness of the wet body


I SAW FROM THE WAIST DOWN A DOG

Wearing every terrain		And through a piece of glass

I saw a face like tragedy

Darkness did not taste like anything

And I saw something tender and blazing

Like a man clothed		With his own mouth


ALL THAT’S LEFT IS THE PROCESS	GROWING INTO LESS

Desire is not feminine rationality nor is

A city a self-organizing space

In my mind equilibrium is tactile	Or it should be

Why can’t I stop?


THE VISION IS MACHINED OVER AND OVER

What’s revealed is dry		It needs to be animated

You can't touch me without feedback

And I still can’t stop		Body counter running, etc.


AND IN FRONT OF THE LARGEST ASPIRATION

He came adorned in body and in hair

Beyond him I saw a woman

I saw the viscera		Of a woman

And a flame sparked from her knees

It came like an endless-edged sword

Clean and loud

The woman put her head down before it


MODERN LOGIC AFTER ALL IS CONCEIVED AS A MESS

Adamantly unsatisfied by skin	The graffiti-tagged garden

The obvious project		The limit


CONSIDER THE CRUMBLING GRANITIC FOUNDATION

We have neither clean hands		Nor their conditions

We are standing outside salvation		Searching for something

Totally neutral


HAVE MERCY ON THE ELEMENTS OF THIS BODY

Its mysteries are of another order

The mouth of the man was firmly on the figure

He said something directly to the light

Which had been braided into the woman’s tresses

Some were bright of soul and others seemed pale of body

That moment was like a little clod of fire burning

Every moment was like a little clod of heaven

The kind that lays down at the first voice which appears


THINK ABOUT THESE RELATIONS BETWEEN US

Think about how it’s all already assembled

But it’s not a certainty		We’re easily overtaken

By the most basic diagrams


NOTHING IS DESPERATE TO BE HUMAN	NOTHING

Wants to be like you		Nothing is actually nomadic

The vision invents its own arbitrary functions

There’s chaotic weather everywhere


AND BEHOLD THE ATMOSPHERE BECAME A COLOUR

And to my great shock the fire fell down into the dirt

I could see the man there through bits of metal

Shadows cast upon him by living sparks

And I said who will deliver us?


ANOTHER DAY ARRIVES AND IMMEDIATELY BECOMES A HOAX

I have neither a history of directing nor of governing

I compose myself	Out of repeated touch

I am not operated by any system


THERE’S NO REBIRTH HERE	REALITY IS LONG

It reminds you of something		This unity of mud

Consider the screen and the vision as the world

The ultimate goal is always a panic storm


AND THEY BURNED AND IN THAT BURNING

I saw the man glowing from his palms

And in his indignation the glowing grew

And I was as if rusted by many waters

His feet fell like sardine stone

And though the air was full

I saw an unclouded splendor


CONSIDER THE DEITY AS A CYCLE	CONSIDER THE DAY

Does lust eat anyone except in sensation

What saves us is a common language

What saves us is terminal communication


BUT DOMINATION, AGAIN, IS NOT TRICKLING

Its way back with some kind of mathematical punctuality

They are waiting and waiting to ensure that it remains a dream


I LOOKED, AND, LO, THE DAWN WAS LYING

I heard the covenant of the atmosphere

Its scent was like wool

The man was like air and the woman was lying

And a portion of each was heaven

And I was a wing of heaven

The atmosphere rose from its corner of dirt

And he said surely people would help us

And that was the sound of glass


TIME GOES WEIRD IN DREAMS

Time goes weird in proximity to the actual

The vision identifies this improvised time as a

State of vertigo		Just an envelope

We know that writing does not recognize endings


THE WORLD BURNED ARDENTLY AND REPENTED ARDENTLY

And the woman said we should not be how we are

And she asked who will help us

The right hand of beauty

Then the grass opened wide its teeth

And I perceived how the dawn and the woman glowed

And I perceived how the great fire withdrew

And I waited for more fire

Elements of “FROM MIDTRIBULATION—” first appeared in altered form under the title “Vision vs. Revelation” in GLYPHÖRIA #6, February 2024.

---

EMILIE LAFLEUR is a writer from Montreal. She holds an MA in English and Creative Writing from Concordia University, and her poetry has appeared online and in print in The Void, Expat Press, Peach Mag, Metatron, Vallum, Usurpator, and The End, among others. She is the 2024-25 recipient of the Susan Jeanne Briscoe Fellowship for experimental writing and is currently working on a project about the poetics of conspiracism.

Interested in being a Fellow Traveller? Email your poetry, prose, visual art, etc. to discordia.sucks@gmail.com. We pay (not much), and pieces are collected a few times a year in a small print edition.

SPEAKING OF RELIGIOUS ECSTASY…