Two Poems by Jessica MacEachern

Radio Dress

The young woman faces the difficulty of reading

a video translation

We are faced

with tech -

nological chaos

In the jarring feedback there is an uncanny home

The error is the impulse to say, “Make it stop!”

We think to ask how to translate the audio glitch

To interrupt or reorient the present

The poet renders

the mistakes into music

This is a heart beating

or an animal scurrying

Cow Tune

Men on horses enter the picture charging ahead

    she is wrong — this is no cave, no wagon

Her movements

   unfold at the same fast mechanical pace

Her hair over shoulder

   breast just exposed

Over the picture

   of a faded-wood barn

   a new video is playing

The camera pans backward from a room’s narrow window

   We are inside its transparent curtains looking out

Men choke on

woman’s error — having left the frame

All that remains is bare light

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Jessica MacEachern is a PhD candidate in the Département de littératures et de langues du monde at the Université de Montréal. Her article “The Feminist Poet Re-Creates the Soundscape: The Excessive Noise of Lisa Robertson and Rachel Zolf” can be read in Studies in Canadian Literature. Her poem "A Look Back" is forthcoming in Vallum's digital issue "The Chase." 

Follow Jessica on twitter @jessisays or instagram @jessisaying.