LATE STAGE COWGIRL
KELSEA VALENTINE
late-stage-cowgirl
Silence is golden
Bernie says
Fuck an intermission
Every minute of life is a great intermission
Between plays
Spent all day in bed
Awake and asleep in the apocalypse
Dream headlines say
We knew it was coming but
We didn’t think it would happen yet
Pacifica California throwing itself into the sea
committing cliff-jump
Swingsets, tv sets, bedrooms dropping 50 ft
To the encroaching ocean below
April flowers
its microlabor you’re performing
existence as data point
farms of taps, little expulsions of energy quantified
marketed to investors, advertisers
price per view, price per click, cost per glance
Eyeball, black mirror
blocking unwanted content is microlabor too
dislikes and likes equally valuable
mined preference fodder
for the al gore rhythm
your doom scroll is the machine’s profit
Tired of living in this digitally-mediated body
Create one’s life as a work of art
There’s this selling
The commodification of personality in both public and private
This compulsive neurotic need to construct ourselves
Groping about for recognition
Do videos of your self and your friends fascinate you?
As if you are somehow more real in image
Desperation does not give us strength to carry on
Hope does
Who do you want to be
Grace gamble
Living, Working in a tiny Box
Maybe these big brains are just slot machines,
Drop a quarter in, watch the wheels turn,
Sometimes hit jackpot, mostly make
your money
back.
Everything is negotiable @ all times -
Communicate regularly & openly
Listen, gather input, set expectations,
How do your actions impact others?
Try not to shrink away & hope
no one notices.
In the middle of worldwide grieving, I want
to support those around me,
To make commitments & to follow through.
Ignore the realities of your life, phone
By giving myself to this citadel wilderness
I have become stronger
Found my resilience
Figure out how much you're capable of
Believe it's more
We are details among other details
And we long to be
Teased out of ourselves
Kim K
Why be the story someone else wrote for you
Reality is whatever
you can make
the most people believe
say whatever you want
into the poetry microphone
as long as you look hot
and are kind
before and after
I don’t care if everything works out
it’s already worked out, best days
worst days
are in fact the only days
Emotions poem
[Bittersweetness] the unbearable awareness
in midst of lifes most precious moments
that the experience itself is passing (fleeting)
[Nostalgia] the comfort and safety of past existence
(real or unreal)
Sarcasm, ironic banter, sparring works
as long as we don't obscure thoughts we’re afraid to say aloud
Avoid couching in humor what requires honesty
Clarity is kindness, vagueness is unkindness
Compassion is the tender readiness of the heart
to respond to pain (of self or others)
Diane DiPrima says
DOES THE END
JUSTIFY THE MEANS?'
this is process, there is no end, there are only means,
each one had better justify itself.
To whom?
My $3.50 bagel cream cheese coffee
breakfast comes in a plastic bag that will outlive me
napkins and a sleeve and tin foil and wax paper
Inside Chester is having knee flayed
ACL separated then reconstructed, they're under general amnesia now, the pain of living, (less 3 hours of chemical sleep) and a handicap Lyft from Brooklyn hospital to
sleeve and foil and wax paper kin
At the end, just a pinch of the world
is all we have left to hold on to,
the hem of a sheet
Rilke
Be sure and calm,
Live everything,
trust the change,
hate nothing -
Seek loyal community to which you may turn
And re-turn
To love another is the work for which all other work prepares us
Haunted by the noise time makes
Gathering paradise
What do you know that I don't
What else have you not told me
Somewhere
We tuck ourselves into the interminable now
Hang my paintings for your head to rest under
Into my arms
Oh Lord
Into my arms
Oh Lord
into my arms
I don't believe in
Holding horses
Every time the sun comes up l'm trouble
Deidentified to a point of
Who was that person I once was
How do I be that person again
How do I find love for new person
Spend more time at the thrift?
You are not what you own
What are the things
I like about myself
Communal, social
Intellectually curious
I am someone who writes poems
I would like to be someone who carries cash
for street food
Elegy for Jordan Neely
Fuck the go-it-aloneness
Fuck cop city militant psyche
this brain broken metropolis
no one gets homes until everyone gets homes
no one lives while boys are taught to kill
no more days without
ENORMOUS CULTURAL SHIFT
SWEEPING CHANGE IN SOCIETAL PRIORITIES
every individual moment of
human contact
is life saving
especially to those
who are rarely afforded it
Living in a place with so many possibilities
easy to feel like you're doing the wrong thing
at any given time all the time
Toss a nickel
into the 9/11 memorial
When the body is tired, the mind will create worries to focus on
Am I observing accurately
Or am I projecting what I feel into what’s happening
If you are far away from yourself
How can you ever be close to someone else
Do not let a cloudy mind
trick you
into doing something you are done with
Sometimes we go back and repeat a mistake,
just to know why we moved on
End poem
Someday there will be the last creature,
The last thought,
All motion stilled and all the stars light turned out,
And All Matter,
Now immutable,
Jutting out into nothingness
post-heat-death,
will be asserting itself
against
The Void pressing in
on all sides,
the dignity of motionless existence,
refusing non-existence.
Late Stage Cowgirl is a zine released in 2023 by Bone Machine Inc. There are 115 copies in the world, happily homed on the bookshelves of friends.
The three images included within the text are Horses Running Over the American West and were released as a series of prints in 2023. Each image is of Kelsea’s watercolor paintings superimposed on her photos of Colorado, Nevada and Nebraska, where Kelsea lived before moving to New York.
