my parents never let me watch Event Horizon as a child, Anna Paquin, & Nothing by Andrew Sutherland

my parents never let me watch Event Horizon as a child

because of the scene with their skins inside-out. This is reasonable parenting. The problem with having a well-observed inner life is you don’t see anything worth knowing. Don’t you walk away from me, mister. I often hear writers describe autobiographical work as their baby. This is unreasonable parenting. Autobiography invariably takes place in that other dimension. Press play the mirror universe, where the scars are at last where you’d most expect them to be. Sucked out the airlock; the dark inside me. Anecdote as evidence. One day soon I will have packaged & sold every painful thing ever housed in my body. The night-hope of art: to finally run out of itself & be emptied into something else, like superannuation. Make your parents proud. It’s like liquid; slides over everything. Let your pupils bleed. When I think of myself, the script provides a grim sense of afterboding, which by definition cannot ever come before. Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see. I find myself at an exhibition at the visual artist’s home, on a mission to drink the free wine dry & leave empty-handed. Wrought-iron loops; a plinth which proudly states, event horizon. I say, of course – I know this movie. The artist slips into the nothing-space beside me. No no, he says. Event horizon. The point from which no light returns. Curves of metal, like a baby. You know, the sculptor says, a subconscious tap of his fingers on the price; sometimes I think the real event horizon …is inside us. The void face-palms. Creation is finished. Sam Neill with no eyes.

Anna Paquin

I think about how in the movies, the first boy who kissed you fell into a coma, and you learnt the hard way that proximity = death. His veins bulged blue in tandem with your eyes, and the movie kept on going. You were so young, Anna; you didn’t know what nearness meant. How you got into a car with Hugh Jackman and your life changed forever: you became the least useful member of a super-powered squad, give or take the guy with laser eyes. If I had laser eyes, Anna, I’d probably destroy my apartment; I’d crumble with the walls. Is it wrong to feel like a superhero when all I do now is sit at home and cry over my friends’ poems? Maybe I’d cope better with the distance if I also got a jet and a fancy name. The other day, I was forced to take the train to a pointless job interview, and a man spat near me. I wanted to scream until I burst wide open, but I reminded myself that he was just an extra, and I get to be Rogue. Still, the horror of it hits in waves. // Anna, I never really appreciated before now that wearing gloves could become a cornerstone of your personality, but lately I’ve been thinking that anyone can reach out and touch nothing. You’re not the only one who can define yourself by a crisis hairstyle. I could be gently iconic, if only on the ‘gram. Yes, Anna Paquin, I plan to be both brazen and timid with my loneliness, just wait and see. But if I’m being honest, Anna, I didn’t think my cool mutant future would turn out like this. Every time I took a BuzzFeed quiz, they told me I was Storm. // Anna, I think about the way your Southern Gothic telepathic powers made you fear the noise of other minds, until the plot instructed you to fall for the first vampire that walked your way. Academy Award-winner Anna Paquin, why are so many of my poems about vampires? Vampires and mutation. Is it because I’m desperate for the change, or terrified of it? I keep a prop coffin in my living room, and a prop candle by my bed. Nothing feels real anymore, except, of course, until it is. Recently, a tweet told me that all the social isolation was negatively affecting the psychic vampire community, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How do you even stake a psychic vampire? Then I went to the bathroom and caught my reflection in the mirror and thought, oh, perhaps I’ve already done it.

Nothing

I think about you, Zero. Your punk tattoos; your skin; your spit; your bright and beaming eyes. The deep, infective joy each time you recognise a Pokemon. The girlfriend who keeps you, happy to be your partner visa – if nothing else. So far away, in pre-pandemic time: the final night with you inside. You said it felt like you would break me. I always thought that’s what poets wanted. Something shattered. Something, to be nothing. Months later, somewhere in the city, I passed you in the light. You looked so disappointed in me. Or maybe, Zero, only tired. Gave my ass a half-hearted squeeze and faded into the evening. All moments are irreducible, but so many have a warrant out on forgetting. Time keeps calling the cops on memory. This moment is already Zero. And later still: like droplets seeking distant rooms, a text from you; a touch of nowhere. I’m scared of getting sick. So scared of going home. Scared nobody will want me inside of them again. Zero, no one ought to break in two. Now, most nights, I just want to go to sleep. The longing yawn of skin to skin. What power within the fake name that you gave me: Zero, Zero, Zero. Just now, I walked a moment in the air to think: is this a different night from any I remember? Returning to my bed, a moth materialised from deep within the folding void of my pocket. The moth flew broad grey circles, narrowing toward the light – like it hadn’t even read about Icarus as a child. But then, I’ve also known myself to mistake a shuddering bulb for sun. How willingly we hold ourselves hostage to the lonely volts of others. Slight disturbances of light; the speed of our vibration. The need – then disappearance. Zero, there’s no craft in this work; except inasmuch as exhaustion’s always there, splitting the proud corners of poems.

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Executive Producers

Daniel Henson

Sue White