"Girl From Space" by Julie Epp
Carrie Chappell | Dans ces beiges très confortables.
-after Hélène Bessette’s Ida ou le délire
the hinge
of the glass door
makes a noise
each night when
we come home
each night when
we march wrathfully in
yes makes a noise
as if it wanted
a singular
tourism of light
not our bodies nagging
with their
questions from
our beige depths
looking for the solace
of our beige rooms
where we eat
beige dinners
vaguely bariolés
along with the others
across the way
beigely stacked
in rows we call
a city of light yes
lights refracting
beige – yes the hinge
grinces at us and
we try our laughing
at others and our
beige fights after beige
lovemaking hued
momentarily by
the taupeness of orifices
of songs festering
in the cranny of pages
gallimardeuses
the yawn of their
spines across the hours
we write these lives
accruing the écru
of convenient longing
pitching sheets like coats
over the corpses of dreams
the hinge
of the glass door
makes a noise
each night when
we come home
each night when
we march wrathfully in
yes makes a noise
as if it wanted
a singular
tourism of light
not our bodies nagging
with their
questions from
our beige depths
looking for the solace
of our beige rooms
where we eat
beige dinners
vaguely bariolés
along with the others
across the way
beigely stacked
in rows we call
a city of light yes
lights refracting
beige – yes the hinge
grinces at us and
we try our laughing
at others and our
beige fights after beige
lovemaking hued
momentarily by
the taupeness of orifices
of songs festering
in the cranny of pages
gallimardeuses
the yawn of their
spines across the hours
we write these lives
accruing the écru
of convenient longing
pitching sheets like coats
over the corpses of dreams
Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Carrie Chappell is the author of Loving Tallulah Bankhead and Quarantine Daybook. Some of her recent poems have been published in Birdcoat Quarterly, Iron Horse Literary Review, Nashville Review, Redivider, and SWIMM, and her essays have previously appeared in DIAGRAM, Fanzine, New Delta Review, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, The Rupture, and Xavier Review. With Amanda Murphy, she co-translated Cassandra at point-blank range by Sandra Moussempès (Diálogos 2025). She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans’ Creative Writing Workshop and, presently, teaches English as a Foreign Language at Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM). Each spring, she curates Verse of April, of which she is the founder, and one of her newest ventures is writing Spiritual Material: Musings from My Second-Hand, Parisian Wardrobe, which she hosts via Substack. As a current doctoral student in French Literature at CY Cergy Paris University, Carrie is completing a research-creation project around the poetic novels of Hélène Bessette.
Julie Epp is a watercolour artist based in Metro Vancouver whose intimate, dreamlike paintings explore hidden emotions and the shifting layers of identity. Through delicate, surreal imagery, she reflects on what is lost, buried, or unspoken within us. Her work invites stillness and self-examination, offering viewers a quiet space to reconnect with their inner world. http://www.julilyart.com/
