rhys feeney
how to make toast
first domesticate wheat almost by accident
realise you can survive like this develop roots
stop living day by day then
start to overproduce store cash crops trade for necessities
trade for luxuries look at you you’ve gone & created capitalism
now form communities nations fight
make up fight with better weapons
be jealous of your neighbour’s wheat store fit your mouth around language
say: toast from torrere to burn hide your violent urges
fight toast to your health neglect yourself
bake bread let it go bad cook it again
repeat figure out electricity without understanding electrons
design a two-slot toaster go to the supermarket
buy bread without understanding how it’s made
put the bread in the toaster cook it forget about it
put it in again burn it repeat so much wheat
so many neighbours think: how did we get here
put bread in the toaster burn the forests forget about it
genetically modify wheat put it in again fit your mouth
around language
burn it
forget about it
repeat
overshoot
1) start a bullet journal
each month count all the things
you didn’t have the resources for
plan to do them again
2) food that made you feel full doesn’t anymore
you have little interest in things you normally enjoy
every time you go outside
the air seems thicker 3) track the build up
you had tomatoes in pots outside
you threw them out
the soil fell away like dust
4) everything you plant dies
the leaves curl the stems bend
you are spending more money on food
track the build-up
you know what is happening
you are reaching your carrying capacity
scratch things from the list on the fridge
5) give yourself time to yourself
light fresh linen candles
& cry in the bath
call it self-care
6) eat a whole loaf of bread in the dark
7) start working again
the topsoil of your tolerance is gone
you break in two days
this is called a feedback loop
your coping strategies don’t work
in this new atmosphere 8)
focus on eating a biscuit very slowly
become distant from the ones close to you
you can’t make love during an extinction event
9) every time you breathe you are adding
to a problem you can’t understand
every day you wake up something
has gone extinct while you slept
t/w: dsh
Sometimes someone I’ve known for a long time notices it. It makes me want to break myself down into individual morphemes, into quarks, to dissolve.
When they say what happened, they want a story. Which presents a problem: how do you narrativise it? You can’t narrate a body without disembodying it.
Statistically, male rates of suicide are higher than female. However, women are more likely to engage in DSH. This suggests these are different urges.
It is not hard for me to recount the details. But detail confuses people, they don’t expect you to be able to talk about it. They don’t expect you to point to your body as a system of signs.
My body as a system of chemical functions no longer functions the way it is supposed to. The amount of chemicals I put in my body that night has done something to the delicate balance of my immune system.
If they are different urges, then DSH can be best linked to the body. A desire to make emotional pain physical; to express hatred at your body; to self-punish.
Physical therefore real. Therefore, a symbol. Therefore, readable.
Occasionally, people ask me why I started to write poetry. My writing is connected to the chemicals in my body. The chemicals in my body are influenced by things I don’t understand.
At school, I listen to students talk about themes from texts. How they relate to their experiences. I am a bad role model: I cannot understand how the things that happen to me & art connect together.
I read Janet Frame & it is nothing like what happened to me. I have four drafts of stories based on my time in the psychiatric ward. I cannot understand the climate crisis.
Even though I think a lot about the cascading effects the climate crisis will have on the world, I do not pretend to understand the science; I try to understand the story. I like the idea that there is a framework underneath all of this, even if it is created from language.
It is hard to tell how many people in Aotearoa harm themselves deliberately. The Ministry of Health only tracks hospitalisations from DSH.
In class, we look at The Matrix, where Morpheus quotes Baudrillard & calls the wasteland the desert of the real. We discuss what is real. The conclusion is reached that even if we think we are living in a simulation, we must go on day by day denying it.
I teach by drawing out links. If a character does this, can we make this conclusion about them? If a poem says this, could we link this to our own life? These questions rely on modal verbs that imply ability, permission, possibility.
I have no issues telling people on the internet the worst bits about myself.
Sometimes, in class, a student will ask me about my arm. I never tell them the truth even though I think young people in Aotearoa need solid examples of mental health survivors.
I have no issue putting my diagnosis in a poem. The diagnosis that is hidden from my immediate medical record for fear of prejudgement. I am used to hiding important things from important people in my life. The Light Armoured Vehicle is not the only reason I didn’t attend the parade.
I like the idea of cause & effect. The air gets hotter, there are more fires. More trees burn, more carbon is released. The air gets hotter, there are more fires.
DSH is prevalent in young people: around 18% of self-identified males & 29% of females surveyed in the Mental Health Foundation’s Youth ’12 survey had attempted it in some form.
I think when people notice for the first time, it changes something fundamental about how they perceive me. Something shifts in the network of interactions. The relative positioning of our bodies changes.
Moreover, 35% of same-sex & 56% of both-sex attracted young people had attempted it recently.
There is more to this than facts, more than details. Tim O’Brien calls this ‘story truth’. We process our reality in narrative. Therefore, choices must be made; links must be formed.
Getting a tattoo is a choice, it is a way of claiming part of your body back from your genetics. You are asserting yourself over a system of body conception in our society.
In a way, scars are the same thing. They are not history but action. My scars are old but have yet to settle into soft hidden scar tissue. They have yet to cease hurting. When people ask about scars, they are asking about history, but it is an answer you can only give in present tense.
When you ask about a tattoo you don’t say when/how did you get that. You ask what it means. You ask for the link between that symbol & the person.
I have no way to explain myself but in the positioning of events. At school I call this parataxis; at home I call this coping.
Rhys Feeney lives & teaches in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. His poems can be found in elsewhere, Mimicry, Sponge, Foodcourt x Litcrawl and issue seven of Starling.