THE OLFACTIONS:

POEMS ON PERFUME

ANNE GORRICK

BLAZEVOX[BOOKS]
Buffalo, New York

The Olfactions: Poems on Perfume

by Anne Gorrick
Copyright 2017
Published by BlazeVOX [books]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without
the publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey Gatza
Cover: detail from Indigo 2 (of 12), 2016, by Anne Gorrick (monotype in encaustic, gold pigment
dust, frankincense resin and oilstick on Rives lightweight paper; 8.5 x 11).
End paper image by Septimus Piesse
First Edition
ISBN: 978-1-60964-265-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952162
BlazeVOX [books]
131 Euclid Ave
Kenmore, NY 14217
Editor@blazevox.org

publisher of weird little books

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A laboratory known to play with our ideas

A gifted scratch
Annick rotates it to disturb all hope
The feeling of worn out leather, a hot motor
balanced with contradictions, cream drawn on our wrists
An idea thats nothing like you
The welcome of occasions in tar, styrax
Le nouvelliste, le livre, a jungle
Le lac des cygnes
A laboratory of infants
Oud 27, Neroli 36, Rose 31, Iris 39
Le labo Island
Camarines sur Phillipines
prior to and independent of capital
Is Knoxville a good place to live?
Is knowingly an adverb?
Or a neutral linking verb
like cherryblossoms
The universe can cause seizures
Many hours detected
in this metal band
Her most relevant compositions
include a dark smoky tea and rubber to the n-th power
but still nowhere close to being easily approachable

[Even though it is a vital olfactory shock, we generate Lonestar Memories / Names are in
fact abstractions / so thick you can almost taste them / a worn leather jacket laid over a
motorcycle engine]
Twist
Be careful with the dosage
Salubrious and toxic
A sheer presence
between resinous and dusty a forest appears
between texture and stableness

Type attribute, traveler number, the unknown

Paper persistence and vision, silver and gold allergens
What is a synonym for being nice
that doesnt mean courteous

13

or her love of conceit?

An octopus uses a Ouija board
Your voice is a hymnal
For
a
second
time:
desire

As for a lab, an atom plays

with our thoughts of being an exception
Talent-rich, thoughts taken
The speculator revolts against the creative scar
A scent that obstructs the revolution of all desire
In place of feeling, leather attaches to the body like an engine
For the second time, desire pulls at our wrists in degrees
You think youd like a glance of another place
that your thoughts are included in this bottle
in a birch canoe, tar and vanilla
An octopus uses a Ouija board to find its old flames
Your voice is a hymnal
Hands up high were screaming
Hands up high were singing
What is your idea of wrongdoing in a poem?
A Valentine reference?

What happens
when you soak a dirty leather jacket
in Lapsang Souchong tea?
(what many are describing as "campfire" is more consistent with dirty leather jacket)
Somehow alchemically produced
out of birch tar and styrax

[The "Damsel in Distress" gig is getting old. Man up / to an infernal little haiku on the
subject of brimstone and treacle / A more intimate, delicate and personal gesture / You are
not allowed to use an older song]
As though the leather has been rendered more supple by the tea infusion
or was it just the quickly slammed shot of whiskey
finally kicking in?
This one's not for me
although I did enjoy the Harley test ride
to view the dying embers
of a California wild fire at dusk
+ memories of hospital antiseptic, but good ones

14

Idea for a new Olympic event: how to invite a girl to the

prom
What to give up for Lent, or when youre bored
Wolf value, simple stains
What fats are you composed of?
What chromosomes?
What are Saturns rings made out of?
O what a friend we have in Jesus
As far as a laboratory is concerned
odiferous substances, correct knowledge
Our thoughts of the Seine play with exceptions
The talent to take the thought and turn it into a scar
to block the revolution of desire
Instead of feeling, leather attaches to the body like a machine
a motorcycle, smoke, cream in view of all these notes
For the third time, a refusal has been drawn on our wrists
A fragment, a fraudulent document
What do frogs eat in the Club Asteria?
Should butter be refrigerated?
Should boys and girls be separated in school?
Old books, wooden furniture, dusty rooms, campfire smoke, barbecue sauce
all in this small bottle
A true masterpiece
with an opening burning/tarry note
a certain summer feel
that evokes machinery operating in the hot sun
(like some of the older tram cars used in Vienna)
I love the city and vintage public transport, so for me that is not bad

[Our scents are extremely qualitative compositions created by some of the best perfumers in
the world. The dosage of each scent is an integral part / Contradictions draw us back to our
wrists / The bonfire, but without firecrackers and drunk kids / A nonsynthetic
unconventional]
None of the grating sharpness you sometimes find
but unfortunately just a dash of Windex
or even a dry post-wildfire scent
After a while, the smoke most resembles burning chaparral
the ominous smell of approaching disaster
for us Californians

15

Are you ashamed you did nothing to help all night long?
Administer help to a choking victim
Paraffin wax, paramedics, paper decorations
Pathogenesis didnt pay off
the
adopted
idea
of
attention

When fragrant materials are 24 pieces of correct knowledge

a performance in laboratories
give exception to the adopted idea of attention
Speculate on what would prompt a creative scar
These materials stop the revolution of all desire
the feeling of leather attached to the machines body
Because these notes are written in cream
a second rejection pictures our representatives wrists in some degree
The fact that we wish and look at another place volatilely
The idea is calm, but without matter
Please open. Welcome
You are written down in
canoe birch, asphalt, styrax
24 is 60% of what number?
24 is what percent of 120?
The number 24 has been canceled
24 is not enough in flipdown
Is Nutella healthy?
Tracesources are generated
Mercurial, shimmering, Gareth Pugh-esque
(i.e. on the razor's edge of wearability)
Annick Menardo =
gasoline, and a bone-dry vanilla
a bipolar shape-shifter
seeming sweet and sultry one minute
coarse and carcinogenic the next

[Phantom Ensemble; source / Ive made no secret of my stormy relationship with patchouli
/ But to me the most interesting thing I found was Le Labo's wonderfully dirty Patchouli 24
/ K meanwhile amused himself at the Guerlain counter /Its
known to diminish depression, flight]
A glass of flat, watered-down root beer
into which someone's extinguished a cigarette
16

is nothing short of revelatory

a deliciously dark confection
The brawn to complement brains
The initial ferocity can be compared to the Breath of God

Exceptionalism
She feels so unhandled
by his user codes, his withholding calculators
his perfect north slopes
Patience like painted words, parasols
Many hued Nazi patterned sweaters
24 tablespoons equals how many cups?
Tall clear glass vases
A perfusionist, the smell of oranges
When 24 related and fragrant materials are used
instead of correct knowledge in laboratories
we perform our own exceptioned ideas
A fragrant scar is a revolutionary desire
The feeling of leather attaching at 24 points to the bodys machine
The smoke adopts us as we were known to our own wrists in degrees of trust
If you thought the fact that we wish to look away volatilely
The idea is calm and has no questions in it
Please open this fragrant idea
which welcomes the number 24 in you
Write this down, takes notes: canoe birch, asphalt, styrax, vanilla
Crash verdict, cake meanings
When initiative takes the place of a noun
takes the itch out of mosquito bites
Papal infallibility puts people to death
Idealistas, their weight charts
Idea paints and their mixing ratios
Ads geared toward rebellious adult Christian children
Fisheye lens, a Texan naturalist
Burning bark and spluttering resinous fires
This black, pyroligneous uproar
lasts for a good few hours
and then begins a discussion with spiced purple fruits

17

[It won't make him smell like Haight-Ashbury / Addictive if you like a little danger in
perfume / The leaves are aged before being distilled, which takes up to 24 hours / Knowledge
was a girl who must have adored her own eyes]
I find the oriental turn problematic
not for its implementation, which is sound
but for smoothing out
the raggedness up top
that I so relish
Despite the volte-face
it remains darkly fantastic

With a criminal record and a heart-shaped face

you can join the Navy
Three guys told an alliterative story
about the sperm and the egg
Create your own superhero
using streak atelectasis
Symbols lyric through darkness
Spiders and spirits get along fine in this nethermost abyss
Ladder ball, win it like a helicopter
Carefully place an apocalypse
into a barjoke with a swan
and
wish
their
rights
over
us
us

18

A handful of green onions shimmer in relation

to 24 fragrant materials
The laboratory is a place with an accuracy toward things
which under special result receives attention
This stamp stimulates a scar
in which perfume floats like an idea
We are stationary revolutionists with flagrant materials
A machine with 24 senses, leather and green onions stick to the body
A motorcycle where smoke is still possible
where any green we adopt will dance at those intersections
Our fourth time refusal leaves our wrists
to some degree and reputation
The fact that green onions see us volatilely and wish their rights over
We are opened to an idea that dances at constant temperatures
but there is a question of method
The early part felt like the number 24
in a canoe birch ringed in asphalt and snowbells

Codeine seas, lozenge reverence

A scent thats calming, that cats dislike
thats a seductionlottery
A grapejuice fishplace metalshow
Stabbing mockingjays, expectancy theory
an electronic cigarette
Red jackal fluid, sincerely sleeping, smoking
Saying in conclusion: salt
You're in an old old old university
You're sitting in biology class dissecting a frog
that has been sitting in chemical formaldehyde
The librarians are right outside the open window
burning OLD OLD OLD books

[The whole 'library-full-of-burning-science-textbooks' description came about when I first

smelt Patchouli 24, one of Le Labo's distinctive ideas / The invention relates to sesquiterpene
synthases from Patchouli plants ...24(10), 1171-1175), a -selinene synthase and a humulene ...]
Smooth cognac y, decent longevity
Better longevity than Labdanum 18 . Unisex
I wish I could go for this because I know it has an infinite depth to it
It's one of the thickest concoctions I've ever smelled.
Barbecue sauce for humans! Awesome!

Burnt toast disorders

What if you smell like a rose or maple syrup at work?
Or like fish or the Parthenon, or pine trees?
Is a passenger pigeon party going to stop at
her Santa Maria pink patches?
We know drama, that viruses are not exactly alive
A fragrant relationship moves in a laboratory
which is a place of acquaintance with our various things
An idea that receives our attention will dance
Scar and scent and fact float like revolutionaries
A machine that dances with green leather attacking
The body, the motorcycle, the possibility of smoke adopts us
This is the price of actions
Our fifth refusal is directed at our wrists
Facts are composed and flown like thoughts about events

19

The fragrant materials will open like an idea at

a constant temperature to question our methods
Part thought, part precedence, part illusion
A handful of green onions dance in the space around your hands
What if you increase 24 to 30?
His intelligence was both inherited and inaccessible
Leathery sea anemones seem to fruit out of her skin
Deformed leaves on roses, vinyl repair kits, pearls
How special and transgressive can it be
to buy a bottle of Liquid Smoke for $1.50 at the grocery store?
A violent moving picture of total shock
then a cabin that doesn't get used very much

[A small East Indian shrubby mint; fragrant oil from its leaves / Growth and Nutrition of a
Suspension Culture of Pogostemon cablin Benth. / But it was too weird, too bizarre for me]
A smoky leather opening morphs into patchouli-dirty vanilla
to become a dry, salty scent with an edge for dark nights in dirty cities
What's in the name is not in the juice
And the drydown is not vanilla
It is vanillin (a by-product of paper manufacturing)
A uniquely barbecue & bubblegum
(Dubble Bubble, precisely) accord

Suede sectional, worn birds, a soundtrack path in the

clouds
What are some of the words to describe someone?
Textual
analytic
looking like a snake that slithers but really a book
larval lace
launching analysis
Laird Hamilton by committee
A century has passed over these cardboard seas
flagrancy
wants
20

These materials have been perfumed by the number 24

and dance in laboratories with both knowledge and accuracy
Attention to these ideas causes speculators to trade scars
Even the idea of Annick dances
her flagrancy wants a stationary, revolutionary everything

stationary

A machine in 24 directions attacked by leather and green onions

The body like a motorcycle and the extremity of possibility
The price of vanilla actions are inevitably leather and tobacco
We refuse the pulse of our own reputations
Desire composed like an idea open to an event
Anteriority and its illusion like the number 24
A Tuscan stove
A hot mix filled with plaster and meaning
Cut away these notes marked return to sender
notes that burn for coding
Is a created opal real?
A crooked kind of wild dark, a lake vanishes in Chile
A carrot island walkthrough
Decay tabs do not exist
A hazy vanilla veil
at the very tail end
a "niche mess"
discordant
or the way a house smells
when a chimney is clogged
and too much smoke backs up into the house
instead of going up the chimney
P.S. I love you, Annick

[Classic rotary, Embryolisse concentrated 24 hour miracle cream, turbo ear / Self-portraits
in motion Don't panic Hypergraphy Sometimes narcissism is good therapy In the
little house by the sea]
Like Fumerie Turque on steroids
with a small dash of civet?
It should come with a warning sign: APPLY WITH CARE
However, if you enjoy smelling like "Katenschinken"
(a heavily smoked North German ham)
it is just the right perfume for you

Draw my thing with drawer pulls

Our future chipmunks, or a home in Palestine
or our regularly scheduled program
Smear yourself with a sticky substance
that smells like roses while youre meditating
Taste ammonia psychically in French

21

Iris again in Dallas, taxable, his unnoticed questions

If you watch it backwards in stainless steel
Maybe you want to start a business
making rosary beads out of maple leaves
or lotions in Binghamton, or in the land of parrots
Autumn skylark analysis
Fragrantica
The scents of laboratories are reports and ratios
a precision which causes attention to an idea
Scars are speculative tradesmen on the production of talent
Perfumes float with the ideas of their creators
both revolutionary and stationary machines
with 24 directions toward rawhide and motorcycles
Because of an adopted cream composed with controlled desires
a different place will dance its thoughts towards us
The scented materials will open like a suitcase
Part thought, part anteriority, part writing
the will to dance in a canoe with asphalts and snowbells
with vanilla also the color of green onions
What smells like light blue?
So raven, that embraceable empty feeling is no longer with
us
Galileo cheats at sasquatch annihilation
I do not like the smell of this authority
Which ones are the non-oyster months again?
Its as if this slogan never happened
Youve been booed by mail
There is a butcher in your heartchords
The other notes in this are entirely irrelevant
if you don't have a huge love affair
with excessively sooty smoky birch tar and foetidus
Extremism for its own sake
recommended for leather-clad demons from the eighth circle of hell
(where those dwell who do violence to others and themselves)

[Palmarosa 25. Patchouli 26. Peppermint 27. Petitgrain 28. Rosemary 29. Rose Absolute 30.
Tea Tree 31. Thyme white 32. Tomar seed oil 33. Valerian 34. / I apologize for being MIA for
the past couple of weeks. My sleep clock has been out of whack]

22

Birch tar. Animalic notes. Civet. Indoles

Kinky. Funky
Musically it's the like the fragrance equivalent
of a Bartok piano concerto
Or something
It brings to mind images of people wearing masks
and whipping each other for enjoyment

Youve selected a category, click to continue

Mothballs that smelled like drinking
Elderberries, a rat, baitholder, blackfish, beat hazard
Before the sunrise self destructs, lie recumbent
To paint a waterlily, to paraphrase this poem
to patronize someone
What are 24 notes that tap deep emotions?
Start with bergamot, a tar syntax
pink chimes rectified by snowbells, galbanum
You will produce a vaccine against anhedonia
all
thoughts

toward

open

A ratio of 24 blues and greens attaches to our dancing

The laboratory of our own knowledge
The precise notes of her thoughts
stimulate our scars with presumption
Our interest is a suspended matter, but there is also a machine
the body of a motorcycle possibly edged in an informed tobacco fact
Scent employs us
Strict examples in behavior, cream adopts us
Our sour typical impulses toward representation and denial
A factual craving constitutes this thing
A method of questionings, all thoughts open toward
anteriority and hallucination
Im writing these 24 dances in asphalt
to be performed in a birch canoe

23

What are your imaginary numbers, your interior

and narrative prompts?
after the perfume Ambre Russe
(for Parfum dEmpire by Marc-Antoine Corticchiato)

Olfactive portraits of great empires

To mix history with perfume is sumptuous, baroque
One spritz will carry you across a battleground for long distances
Spell excess in the languages of Tsars
Leather sins like an incense or atonement
An authoritative composition, a form of consolation
His breath has a velvety agreement, a honey-like obviousness
a courageous booziness
The light vivifies
Underline the large characters and their dark flowers
their coriander groove
Terrible energy beings
endowed by our creator with his announcements
We are very busy with our venoms
even if they are economically justifiable
a vertical horizon closed small around us
to undertake congruent angles
Are verbs in Italian legally binding?
Old South Bend lathes
Venus in Capricorn is wireless by my account
demotivational early symptoms, funny and hungry
Are you very excited in French or Spanish?
[The moment we smelled Ambre Russe, we knew that we found our new Holy Grail amber
scent / Initially, one is treated to a heady, spirituous accord, supplied by the bitter, salty
vodka. Bracing / I'd suggest one avoid spraying Ambre Russe in the car, because there can
be breathalyzer issues if stopped by police / I grumbled. Vodka note in a perfume with
Russian in its title, how stereotypical is that?!]
In a thesaurus, look up:
delirium
synonym
definition
utterance
Now, introduce an unusual or unfamiliar word
a prime or composite number
an induction bulb
intralinks
introvert
intrinsic

27

Introduce me as a sheath or an essay

A couple of years ago
while spending my New Years holiday in Rome
I caught a glimpse through the glass of Hotel de Russies hall
It was dark and rather cold outside
but inside the lights were burning
the air seemed warm and full of scents
(vodka, champagne and fine foods, smoke and ladies perfumes)
and, most stunningly
a weird composition of Christmas trees made out of blond fur (!)
towered in the middle
It didnt scream, "Smell me. I'm rich!"
by a shadowy insertion of dark incense
The three main elements are in perfect balance
and the agreement in sweet restraint
This is not an exercise in syrupy mellifluence
A touch of rooty tea, the sweet-resinous amber
impresses the dusty effect just at the beginning a bit laundry
Opulent
Packaged bees in their paragraphs
Parrot to aviary
Parakeet to dog
Parakeet to cockatiel
Parrot to another parrot
Essences, civilizations, gods
Dnealian handwriting, bones, emblems
or a park filled with winter and turquoise
What are the bones that run down your back?
There is evidence, data in ancient poems
Fat cells, fluid in tissues, fables
Ponds filled with frankincense, fractions
c-thru rubies, repressed memories
and

their
28

They were excited to show off their empires

and their deteriorating pasts
Imaginative public lands might be elegant and expensive
We are at the end of our intervals now
This perfume saints us into excess
As if a river of vodka could make up for leather

deteriorating

pasts

Champagne and honey commit a crime here, burnt

We tilt heavily toward beginnings
A trembling constitution of a functional dying serenity
into which authority has been mixed
A honey-like velvet
A booziness which acquires the feeling of darkness
Exaggerate to fascinate
a brown fragrance, a grooved ambergris
What if decimals could represent themselves in court?
The company welcomes you, your acts of thinking
your school uniform
Nerve hallucinations cut with an acrylic knife
an epithelium olfactory poetry
Portraits of Jesus by Joanne
People hope with their grief
Girl lyrics pearl, a Rome emergence in Japan
Empiricists, prophecy
I collect torrents:
a deep sea trailer
the steels in history, in silk roads
Say petalthrone instead of pelvic bone

[Ambre Russe represents a journey across the Russian Empire of the 1800's / Ambre Russe
opens with a sharp blast of vodka. A true to life, salty alcohol note with the beautifully rich
amber sweetness underneath / Ambre Russe honors the last of the Romanov tsar family.
Imagine a formal ball in winter, with music, champagne and fires fired with luscious
woods]
The pernicious effects on the first born
The past castle of shadows walkthrough
The created past, a pantagraph
Nevershoutnever in a prologue
Chords in tense exorcism, a crescent
Weather tense verbs
Cricket world cup, crackhead obituary, character
defamation
Crude oil prices
Stitches, rootsmagic, Polyvore, plankton
Create your own museum of superheroes
A passionate love affair

29

in a freezing war torn city

dark and boozy and sexy and amber and very bittersweet
If you like real drama, this is one to sample
The list of notes includes
vodka and champagne, leather, tea, incense, and cinnamon
Enough to keep anyone warm all winter
This makes me want to build a time machine
set the dials, go back and find me
a debauched fading Russian aristo, blue-eyed and bitter
and play good old fashioned leather games
Always remember that boots were indeed made for walking
sometimes on each other
Sniffing it off my wrist in my candlelit room
I could throw vodka around fur-scattered rooms
drink champagne to the sound of gunfire and boots marching on stone
Ah, amid the glamour of conquest and burning love
what else could you possibly want to wear?
Puzzlemaker, we are healed by
his stripes, his perseverances, his snails
A flavorists apprentice, an anthropology devoted to
antonyms
anthem, constants, coefficients
The scent peddlers
of rain, salamanders, thunder, water, papaya
Scrabble meat, scent-ucation lottery
Pearls are what percent paradise?
Pay homage to the patron deity of Athens
the windchill in lyrics
Her very public properties are elegant, expensive
terminate distances
If we believe in Russian ambers, then we also admit time
the new holy we in which we are baroque
Even the crimes commit crimes here
and they burn specifically
Property heavily at the beginning
the dying function of peace
an authorization that mixes with hot breath
Honey is lively in a velvet-like way
booziness acquires a density
spice and leather connected by an underlined smoke
30