"Truth Conditions", Margaret Devadason

 

Instructions: Key 'p · q' = 'p and q'; '¬ p' = 'not p'; 'p ∨ q' = 'p or q'; 'p → q' = 'if p then q'

( ( ( ( ¬ G · ¬ P ) · ( ( ( S → B ) ∨ ( ¬ Y · R ) ) ∨ ( ( A · H ) · ( E → C ) ) ) ) ∨ ( ( K · ( ¬ U · W ) ) · ( ¬ M → T ) ) ) → ( ( ( ( ( ( ( I · M ) · ¬ J ) · ( Y · ¬ E ) ) ∨ D ) ∨ ( ( L · ¬ Z ) · M ) ) ∨ ( ( P · ( ¬ X · V ) ) · ¬ R ) ) · ( ( ( ( T → Q ) · U ) → ( F · ¬ O ) ) → ( H → ¬ N ) ) ) )


A: Every photo in the family album is of someone who is not me. 

B: My name is bubbling over on the stovetop of our domesticity.

C: Even a scared crow knows what’s coming.

D: I trace my lineage on the future axis.

E: A shot rings out.

F: I skim what I need off the froth of my mistakes.

G: Grandma is alive.

H: Hell is a mirror that does not recognise your face.

I: I introduce myself as myself.

J: No one takes me seriously.

K: I flip through Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet.

L: I hold your hand.

M: My heartbeat is steady.

N: I am there.

O: Guilt digs a pit right through me.

P: The pastor is watching.

Q: I have gone through every letter of the alphabet to find my name.

R: Someone at the sink sneers.

S: The sunshine has become too much for me to bear.

T: I put the book down.

U: I understand everything as if for the first time.

V: I wash my hands at the soup kitchen.

W: The words go in one eye and out the other.

X: I take off our wedding ring.

Y: I walk into the correct bathroom.

 

/ Margaret Devadason’s poetry has appeared in anthologies including Seven Hundred Lines and Food Republic. Margaret contributed the winning piece of the 2019 Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry to the journal OF ZOOS.


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