ANN PEDONE is a writer, publisher, and book designer. She is the author of three books of poetry and several chapbooks. Her poetry, reviews, and creative non-fiction have been published widely. Ann is the founder and editor-in-chief of Antiphony: a journal & press, and Pin// a journal of contemporary poetics.

This project takes as its inspiration The Insomnia Drawings by Louise Bourgeois. The bits of italicized language all come from The Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes. These poems imagine a kind of liminal state—somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, night and day, coital and post-coital. Often fragmentary, locked in the constant struggle to find the place of sleep, these pieces move into and out of the body on a wave of not quite sense, of not quite sense-making.

AUTHOR statement

5 Fev

The things I've               learned pressing
myself up again   & again
against this                                    bronze
door knob  (Op. 54)  (barbituate) breaks
a kind of numbness–which is not a
moment of forgetfulness. That terrifies me


6 Fev

I made           R come over asked him to                                                 sit in that
big yellow chair &
masturbate for an hour
                          these ruffled curtains

I took a picture
ejaculate more          rubbery than
twelve   years             at              sea   but

I don’t want to make                                                                too much out of that


7 Fev

& just when all the geese        have all
finally gone south for winter

                                     you ask
when “I” go down on “you” is the
narrative nesting
                              in my mouth or yours?


8 Fev

Written in red pen
lower right-hand corner

I can see now that the problem here
is that            the terms of this insomnia

can only be understood       once you’ve spent at
least a day   maybe two               thinking long & hard about young
Wittgenstein feeding himself                    bowl after bowl of
                                                                    sour milk                          in the trenches


9 Fev

Synonyms for
“slot machine”          “minimum basic income”       “adult men’s



diapers”


                In red felt tip pen in the upper
                right hand corner



                What’s remarkable about these notes
is a devastated subject being the victim of presence of mind

5 Fev

The things I've                                      learned pressing
myself up again           & again
against this                                                        bronze
door                             knob (Op. 54)           (barbituate) breaks
a kind of numbness–which is not a
moment of forgetfulness. That terrifies me


6 Fev

I made                                              R come over asked him to           sit in that
big yellow chair &
masturbate for an hour
                            these ruffled curtains

   I took a picture
           ejaculate more                                   rubbery than
twelve       years                              at                          sea      but

I don’t want to make                                                   too much out of that


7 Fev

& just when all the geese            have all
finally gone south for winter

                                     you ask
when “I” go down on “you” is the
narrative nesting                  in my mouth or yours?


8 Fev

Written in red pen
lower right-hand corner

I can see now that the problem here
is that                           the terms of this insomnia

can only be understood               once you’ve spent at
least a day       maybe two                         thinking long & hard about young
Wittgenstein feeding himself                    bowl after bowl of
                                                                    sour milk                                  in the trenches


9 Fev

Synonyms for
“slot machine”              “minimum basic income”       “adult men’s



diapers”


                                                   In red felt tip pen in the upper
                                                   right hand corner



                                                   What’s remarkable about these notes
is a devastated subject being the victim of presence of mind

Volume 16.1, winter 26

Ann Pedone

from: Insomnia

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