This chapbook is one section of a larger project, a book manuscript called Not Now Now, which is forthcoming from Rescue Press in October 2025; the book is broken into 3 sections—Not, Now, and Now—and this chapbook makes up the third section, the second and final “Now.” Which is funny, because this section was composed in a burst in a before time—it is very much not now—or is it.
It was a dark and uncold January in a hot place and I had taken to keeping the shutters drawn always waiting for night to come in my ungrateful for sunshine way. Kindergarten had just begun to happen for me—and by “me” I mean my child—three whole days a week. Kindergarten was about to end, for everyone, but I—everyone—didn’t know that yet. I was coming off a five-year old—a lifetime—barely writing, not writing, working on a book collaboration with my parenting partner called “Not Writing” (still unfinished) and so set myself a January nighttime task to write. Movies were involved—the old kind.
My child says her motto is “not now, soon.” Is this a response or a call. May we all be unoriginal in our relationships. She says “Mama you should have a book called ‘Just A Second’ because all your books are about time.” May we all not quote our children to explain our selves.
Knock knock—who’s there—denial—denial who—no, denial—denial who—no, denial—denial who. My step counter on Mother’s Day was 32. There is a bat in the house. The bat is a metaphor. The bats in my child’s attic are metaphors. To move my child out of the attic is to create fear of a possibility, an improbability, a bat invasion, bites, rabies, to cost her precious sleep and ignorant calm. There is no bat in this house, there is no attic.
These poems are full of it—full of mouths and mothers, American movies and our exported sense of importance, our imported sense of our own lack, our downgraded ability to process the information, our willingness to say something and then something else. And when I say “our” I mean “me.” The poems are funny in the way a fire is. I hope you read them aloud. I read them aloud too loud, which, as Karen Dalton would say, is the best way for no one to hear them.
.tiff)
Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry, prose, translation, and the in-between from the most valiant and precarious small presses—Les Figues, Ahsahta, Subito, and Sidebrow Books. Her newest book, Not Now Now, is forthcoming from Rescue Press. Doller is the founder of an international literary arts journal and independent press, 1913 a journal of forms/1913 Press, where she remains éditrice-in-chief, publishing poetry, poetics, prose, and all else by emerging and established writers. She lives in the USA, for now.