I’m made unbidden a present of not“supersonic” as I texted Cox though if I applyto my cheek its soft bristle brushits bristles in circles around circles if I circlethe face if I endeavor to massage transparent its meadowdecorous its purely decorative meadowextract yellow-gold budded bouquets of oiland instructions also music play throughthe scouring brush head whatshould I call these concentric buffs that buffer“Party for One” into play but super-fluous the body forgotten again this devicecalled “clarisonic” echolocative promise a clearancethis living face won’t get eventuality yet like the cloudcatching no light in its passage to dirt the cloudwherein repeat selfies hover undealt-withabove catching no dust immaterial at $2.99a month a small fund seeding the community-supported server farm atop thigh bonesThe screen crisscrosses out a spire of rainbowcast through the window the outlinesnotice the waters rise the rain gonethe reflective surface need not pause— a nimbusof images singing O of me have I triedto withhold judgment re beauty but a truer formof discernment divests from the recklessholdings on of a past where I was severallyclocked in the glass room looking at the bronzebas-relief of three goddesses before ParisI could not distinguish between the threeposing one of a trio of jokesthe first goes Renoir: I don’t either another whetheror not trained to ground can you distinguishbetween clouds? all the same say you areasked to select from amongpower conquest love you decideon love you want to call it loveturns out the opening of another frontFor your options try to tell them aparttry to tell which one you areor take cover in presentimentclear the future of heaven is immaterialas ever caught up in the question of vantage &whether you are whether you aren’tthe future of heaven though without groundwould like to get out of the clouds to fulfillsome form to abandon try to find in thisa trinity let clarisonic’s virtue the cloudstand in for a clear sound say beauty cloudsthe devices the cloud-devisedbeauty or Beauty devising the cloud in mea cover a three-to-one I flow throughthe connection between the face circlingthe clearing total occludingthe dissipate nimbus the sound ofwhich surfacing
Three-in-one sonic beauty device
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- April 11, 2025
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“Three-in-one sonic beauty device” from Oily Doily: by Alyssa Perry.
Published by Bench Editions in 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Alyssa Perry.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

Alyssa Perry is the author of Oily Doily (Bench Editions, 2024). Her writing appears in Annulet, Coma, Fence, Mercury Firs, and elsewhere. Perry is an editor at the small press publisher Rescue Press and poetry editor at Cleveland Review of Books. She teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
"In Alyssa Perry's alchemical Oily Doily, lyric opens its throat at the vanishing point to pose as vision's dubious double—I see the eyes—and assonance offers up its juicy fruit, its noosey loop. From its "clarisonic" prelude to its Solarian terminus, Perry renders optics as orbit and icon, both the limit of human presence and the interface where immanence still might knock. Fizzy, fatal stuff."
—Joyelle McSweeney, author of Death Styles
"Razor-edged, stagger-rhymed, Oily Doily is a diamond saw. Its music is intricate and remorseless as its subject: empire, centuries of bourgeois kitsch, 80s flicks, tech strip-mining our curiosity, sympathy, and desire for solidarity. Miraculously, the work doesn’t fall for despair but offers clarity within clarity, glittering surfaces within aqueous depths. You’ll emerge from this debut wire-crossed and Perry-pilled. After a hundred pages, I’d gladly read two hundred more."
—Joe Hall, author of Fugue & Strike
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