2 April 2010 | Vol. 10, No. 1

Notes on Dormancy
(The Top-Ten Fears of the Born-Again Virgin)

by ROBYN ART

1) Darkness (So lately I have these visions — the sky at a hover by the off-ramp, steam percolating off the half-thawed river like something vaguely of the body, threaded with frost, hibernatory and beating)

2) Hair Loss (and so all she wants is a cold one and maybe a booth with a view of the local scene but then there's this strung-out looking, mullet-headed guy out of nowhere and suddenly she's in this white van, okay, it's like something straight of out "Silence of the Lambs" and the lack of light is already making her skin do weird things, breaking out like crazy…)

3) Tenderness (the way the body reveals its single, herbaceous intent)

4) Razor Burn (and no matter what kind of hissy fit her mom throws what with plunging the Earth into total and everlasting darkness or whatever here she is, alone with reruns and Bryan Adams bootlegs…)

5) Forgiveness (like clouds, dopey and immense)

6) One big luminous (in the idiom of the Deep South, the expression, "can to c'aint" refers to the passage of a single day; i.e., from the time one "can" see the sun to the point where one "c'aint")

7) Crapshoot of whatever (and what really blows is that she could be in Bali by now, sipping chick drinks or just straight-up slamming Natty Lite out of a funnel, were it not for that wack shit he pulled with the pomegranate seed…)

8) There (more about forgiveness)

9) in the half-light (so imagine you leave certain things out and There is no abduction scene, no white van, no whacked-out guy, and (this is so in-your-dreams that even as I'm telling you this I'm all, like, Whatever) so she totally makes that flight to Bali, does it up with the chick drinks and wet T-shirt contest circuit, here's the postcard right here…)

10) Remembering (wish you were here (not!) Love, your l'il QT 4-Eva…)