The Lightning Room With Jenn Marie Nunes

Wherein Jenn discusses the never narratives ofThe Enchanted Historical Realm and the first street in America; all while the girl-y-est, most mythic, &objectified, bad-ass-est, hero thing-y thing around talks to God.

1. What’s the queerest thing about these poems and how could they be queerer?

Nature is probably the queerest thing. We- that’s “people”- are always trying to fuck nature or vs. nature, and really- we’re the same thing!

I guess the people relationships are only mildly queer. That’s because the narrator doesn’t have much language herself for liking girls, but she totally does duh. So her actions are mostly either just sweet or typical girl-on-girl vicious, but just like her body is erupting with signs of its queer naturalness- spores, bulbs- her narrative is splitting along the norm seam.

2. How do you determine what to put in italics? (if you don’t know, you have to come up with a reason)

Oh, that’s God talking.

3. You play with fragmented narratives here. Or whole never narratives with fragmented information. What draws you to that mode? What do you draw from it?

This project is a never narrative about a growing body place in the scenic Catskill region. The town is known for having “the first street in our nation”. The town is the body. The town is the enemy. The town is drunk. Cut and paste.

Also the queerness. Constructing a new identity or relationship narrative- or so- out of bits and pieces of the one or two that exist.

I draw from this a pretty particulate monster in a princess dress. She is no longer trapped in the tower cuz the tower is built out of amino acids that don’t quite close into pairs.

4. Stare at your poems for one complete minute without reading them and then write the first thing that comes to mind.

Once I get inside I won’t ever be able to get out!

5. When I read these, I feel a sad, frenetic energy like someone trying to live three lives at once because they’re not sure who they are vs who they could be, why do I feel that?

Probably cuz it’s true. The narrator character wants to be the girl-y-est, most mythic, &objectified, bad-ass-est, hero thing-y thing around. There’s sadness because it can be lonely traipsing around all pieced together from other narratives while people prod at you with pitchforks, but don’t cry, she’s probably the one who ate your chickens.

6. Science, in trying to decipher nature, seems itself unnatural. So, when you paired the two ideas in the first poem, it felt very human–in the way that humans also don’t seem natural anymore. Can you talk about that idea and whether it’s right or wrong?

So, unnatural like systems and mechanisms are unnatural? If so, then nature looks pretty unnatural if you spend any time looking at it. Or maybe looking at it through science has changed my idea of what is “natural”. Computron tells me I don’t tell it.

Anyway, I was thinking about humans being outside of nature- particularly in the sense that we think we are and that we somehow also think that nature loves us best. Like we are both conqueror and bff x2, or maybe the golden child, the first born.

Which is naturally, totally: right.