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I began this project when I re-read the introduction to Zadie Smith's recent book of essays, Intimations, in which she writes: "Early on in the (Covid-19) crisis, I picked up Marcus Aurelius and for the first time in my life read his Meditations not as an academic exercise, nor in the pursuit of pleasure, but with the same attitude I bring to the instructions for a flat-pack table – I was in need of practical assistance." In response to this, I set out to create a set of impossible instructions for an impossible time. As I worked, I held in mind the mood of the early pandemic. For these three poems, I cut words from photo-copied pages from a copy of Meditations my brother gave me (thanks Will). Since beginning the project, however, I have sliced up a number of other translations. The images are made through analog collage, almost all from flat-pack table assembly instructions, aside from a piece of a flat-pack bed frame that can be found in the first poem—this was the very first one I ever made and it hadn't yet occurred to me that, of course, all the images must be from tables.

These are from a chapbook, Flat-Pack, published by New Michigan Press in 2022.