(I hope everyone is having a lovely and safe holiday weekend. I had hoped to reach the novel’s midpoint by now, but eh, life. I’ll get back on track with the writing as the week progresses.)
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walls cannot hold
her. MRS. SILK swivels through plaster, her brains falling onto her shoulders and smearing the white wall insides a dull gray. [i don't like that coloring, she says and flicks the brain matter away. it looks unhealthy. are you dirty? have you been sitting in grime for more than a few days? unacceptable! that is entirely unacceptable. what am i supposed to do with those little flecks? i can't eat them. i can barely bite them. all i can do is roll them around my fingertips while screaming. you've done this to me. you always do this to me. again and again and again.] she smacks her forehead against the wall, bending the plaster inward and snapping her skull into three parts. she flicks the bone portions. they bend against her fingers. they break into powder particles that lift into the air and fill her nostrils. [are you trying to make my cellular parts commit cannibalism? my cells will eat my cells, thinking that the brain aches with foreign material when really, all the parts belong to my singular stomach. once again, this is your fault. it is always your fault. you bruise me repeatedly. what am i supposed to do? how do i break your faces open when you have no faces to break? stupid walls. all the membrane in the world can't keep you standing erect. and soon, i'll knock you over. just bulldoze your stomachs. or whatever you call the quivering plaster organs moving around the sheet-rock sheets. my ribs are broken, MRS. SILK hisses.] she cracks the wall down the center. she flings her body at the cracks. they widen. they burst into rooms. they smack against ghosts. ghosts huddle over, backs marked with densely packed musculature resembling warts. THE SILK WOMAN WILL EAT US, the ghosts scream and push beds between their jaws. THE SILK WOMAN COMES OUT OF THE DARK WITH HER HUNGER IN HAND. WE CANNOT GET AWAY FROM HER. SHE OWNS THE HALLWAYS AND OUR RIBS. SHE KEEPS OUR BRUTAL INNARDS TUCKED AROUND A RUSTED NAIL. THE NAIL SHOULD KEEP THE ORGANS SAFE BUT THE SILK LIES. SHE RESTS HER TEETH AGAINST THE ORGANS AND PEELS THE SKIN AWAY. OH, OH, OH. the ghosts bang their heads against the floor. red carpeting dulls the thudding. the walls groan loudly. they spread towards the doors and dip into the staircases. MRS. SILK slips through the cracks. she grasps the moldings in her hands and yanks herself upward, her back aching as she moves. [naughty friends and phantoms, MRS. SILK says, pausing between two walls. naughty little ghosties. i want to eat you up. i want to swallow the silk clinging to your necks. but it isn't real silk. none of it is real at all. all the silk is fake and it clings to me while choking me. i don't want to be choked! do you understand? i do not want to be choked. stop choking me or i will tear your body parts into smaller pieces. this room asphyxiates me and i think the air has gone moldy. have you checked the quality? air quality is important. without good air quality, we might as well condemn our digestive parts to the gravestones. eat the mold. drink the algae. what do our stomach muscles care when the air has gone all gravelly?] MRS. SILK smacks the ground. carpet tufts stick to her hands. she tosses them to the side. [is this what the meat meant inspired? red anarchy? gray catastrophe? have you decided to become the nihilist the guest-book feared? i can't live like this, spending every moment of each dull day worrying you will stab me in the throat while i sleep. i cannot. i just cannot. where is the wall. i must return to the plaster, where it is safe because the collected bulk forms a shell around my stomach, she shouts.] she climbs into the walls and seals the plaster until it presses hard against her face. she breathes loudly, sucking the dust into her sore throat. ghostly hands knock against the molding, looking for an opening, searching for a way out of the hotel and into the night. their fists scrape until their gossamer-like bodies fade away. MRS. SILK slumps to the floor. [this is where i would much rather stay, she says, curling into a ball.]
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(The new novel is coming along well. I don’t have the plot outline completely finished yet but oh well. Also, I’ve been lazy with submissions.As in, I haven’t sent anything out since March. Eek. Today, I will send at least three pieces.)
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(((citrine wallpaper speaks)))
MRS. SILK came and went, then swallowed a closet. that was before the bald faces pushed out of the windows and the furry faces came into the walls. that was before i started peeling. antique men, their wrists rusted down the centers, and thick silver embellishments on their spines, rattle when they touch me. [how do you feel, they ask and peel my paper away.] i bite. i bite hard and i bite fast. i give them splinters. wood shudders in their hands. [not fair, they shout and turn in circles, eyes moist with spontaneous vinegar production.] acid burns our paper. we turn more yellow than quartz. we become green. we are eggs boiled for much too long, the yolks gone gray-green, almost olive shaded, and then we are unhealthy. it is obvious. we lack a nerve center that isn’t an owl eye pushing out of the satin sheets. NEVER LOOK AT US, we scream. but we lie. we want everyone to watch us. we want everyone to settle on our nerves while chewing dirt. there’s dirt below. where MRS. SILK hums into her vertebrae. where she twists into the velvet couch cushions while pretending she has no mouth. it is an invisible mouth. it is one made of yellow muck, orange gelatin. [come here, MRS. SILK screams at the walls and scratches the wallpaper into thick strips that curl at the ends, becoming rose petals and tiny moonscapes.] i keep to myself. i dull in the corners until i look tarnished, until i’m scorched paper. MRS. SILK never touched burned things. she crumbles ash into her eyes and yells as the pain crosses her cheeks. [how dare you open my ashes, she cries while rolling on the floor.] sometimes, when MRS. SILK is angry, i miss the antique men, their clattering metal jaws, the little jars hidden in their cheeks. they bite the ground hard and their teeth clatter. they move and their bones glide together, then clash apart. [who comes into this place, the antique men ask. who comes into our throat place? we had the bugs in our hands. little legged jewels. how do we procure the rubies? if we can't swallow the stones, how do we throw up the quarries? we have all the gems but no stringy restraints to rest them on. come here. now, now. where has the lovely MRS. SILK gone?] sometimes, men kill themselves. not the antique men, although they have been known to guzzle amber bottles overflowing with poison. other men. ones with sharp things hidden in their wrists, glistening metal pieces that slash the air and suffocate lung cells individually. they stab their arms. they break their bones. they run up and down the streets, screaming hysterically, their chest muscles tightly wound around little stony tumors rising from their ribs and the meat goes wrong. the meat pours out of their mouths and leaves a thick gray lacquer on their tongues. [where is the meat, the dying men ask. where are we supposed to put it? there was meat before. there were strings. have they bitten us? have they wound around our flesh until we are marked up and down the arms?] the men drop to the floor and yellow vomit pours out of their mouths. fluid soaks into the rugs. the fluid always glides through the carpeting, coming close to touching my paper bottom but vomit always dries just before stroking the wall moldings. i am clean. i am always clean. no one comes to clean me. i just shake a little, just enough for all the dirty things to fall apart and then i stand silently, my green pieces glistening dully. doors bang against me. MRS. SILK appears with her angry tongue and scrapes the paint off my paper. she rolls the paper in her hands, screaming loudly into the palms before slashing her lips with the paper edges. she uses me like a knife. she folds the paper back just enough for the end to rise into the air. then she slashes. her cheeks, her tongue. the folds around her sides. she cuts everything and bleeds onto the floor. i only got dirt on me once. a man came with his gun and he leaned against me. all his weight went into my paper. he swallowed the gun, jumped up and down, and the bullets went off one at a time, like digested fireworks, until he stepped back, slumped forward, and was gone. he bled heavily. the blood poured out of him. it soaked into the rug, staining the fabric with brownish splotches. i thought i was clean. i was the cleanest thing in the room. but the man lifted his hips slightly and slammed them against me, until i was also red. red and green. stained citrine. who prays to a wall covered with slimy blood? who prays to anything that is red? no one. unless he wants to go with MRS. SILK into the walls. she keeps dirt back there. inside the plaster, deep within the plaster. dirt everywhere. it pours out of her eyes. it sticks to her tongue. she rolls her mouth around and dirt drops onto the floor. she pretends no one sees it. but i do. i always see the dirt. i follow it across the room, until i am so stretched i can’t move any farther. sometimes, i scrape the dirt up and dissolve it into my glue. i suck the dirt into my paper. WON’T SOMEONE TAKE ME OFF THIS WALL, i ask but the dirt ferments quietly. i think i am made of beetle shells, many jeweled cadavers peeled free of their exoskeletons and stitched together to make silky paper. i wish i were. a wing might be left behind somewhere. then i could just roll into a scroll and fly away, citrine paper lost in that cold moonlit night.
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(The ax novel was finished on Saturday. I started my new novel today, which takes place in a hotel. Unfortunately, I’ve been typing so much lately that I hurt my wrist and am now sporting a lovely little support brace to keep my hand from falling off. The liabilities of being a writer. I’m also in the midst of planning a zombie novel. Not because I want to write a zombie novel but because I need to. I have to own the fear.)
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(((apology from the
ghost in room 314))) i cannot see straight. walls move around me, bleached plaster dusting the ground and spreading into the sky but i cannot see past the whiteness. [do you think your bedroom obsessions are healthy, rusted green carpeting asks and fibers reach towards the steam-cleaned beds, sheets wrapped around mattresses like mental restraints.] i would like a restraint. one for my tongue. one for the skin kept tucked beneath the bed. and maybe another for the pillows. feathery fat rustles too much and i cannot scrape the sounds away. they move like stomach muscles. the walls move again. they shake slightly. they twist towards the ceilings and away from the doors. they twist into the bathtub and dissolve into the closet. i close my eyes. i lean towards the hallway and those corridors, stretched apart like arterial tubing, doors creaking open and slamming closed, punctuate the narrow expanses, and they beat softly, then fall silent, before beating again. MRS. SILK walks these hallways. she rests her hands on the walls and i lick her palms through the plaster. i slide into the carpet nails and rub against her feet. i beg for forgiveness and MRS. SILK steps on me. she grinds her heels into my face. she scrapes her toes across my cheeks and i am ruined. and i am left on the carpeting as a foggy smear wearing dusty clothing, a piece of cloth covering my abdomen, another rag against my chest, and a string placed carefully across my mouth. then i hum as MRS. SILK fades away, her long dresses rustling against the carpeting as she strolls back and forth, her skeleton keys hanging from her hips, clanging together and chiming like iron bells. iron bells, cast iron bells. the bells comprised my spleen. the bells i kept tucked into my eyes until she scraped them out. MRS. SILK likes to scrape. she likes to carve. she tilts her head to the left and rattles her jaws. she heaves her head to the right and screams from her tongue. [forgive me, i shout into her ears. forgive me. i did everything you asked me. but i did them wrong. i read the bible for days instead of hours. you said to open the door but i ate it. and then, when i was supposed to wrap ropes around my throat and yank tightly, i lacquered the skin with soap and took a bath. i'm sorry and i know i did everything wrong but please forgive me. please, don't leave me in the room. it's so quiet. and so white. i can't take the alabaster. i can't stand all that bleached porcelain.] she pulls away and i sink into the carpeting again. i lie with my head pressed against the center of an ugly rose, spikes instead of thorns rising from the center, and the tapestry rose unfurls its stringy petals and rubs them over my face. [what are you, the rose moans. what are you? i want to eat you. but you don't have a taste. so what do you come out of? the walls? the ceiling? are you my child? i don't remember having a child. but sometimes, my leaves split and things come out and they say they are my children and so i believe them.] the rose pulls away, strings tucking back into the carpeting, plaiting new vines across the center fabric. i touch the wall. i sit on the bed and watch the ceiling. sometimes, when i am bad, when i think too much and touch MRS. SILK where i should never touch her, my wrists bleed and the blood drips onto the floor and i cry softly. that is when i want to lift an ax onto my shoulders and bash it against everything. but i cannot. but i can’t lift anything so heavy. i can’t lift anything so solid. i keep my bleeding hands against my lap and the blood soaks into my thighs and the blood coats my legs and sometimes, the blood drips onto the bed and then i feel worse and want to eat an ax instead of throw it. but what can i do with an ax when i am just a ghost? make more ghosts? turn MRS. SILK into a ghost so that she has to listen to my tongue? i can’t do that. i love MRS. SILK. she is the most beautiful hotel woman in the world. i want to lick her up. i want to cling to her. but i sit on my bloody hands and outside, far in the hallway, the doors open and shut, open and shut, open and shut while i whisper, [forgive me, forgive me, forgive me...]
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(My fingers are crossed that this will be the final excerpt from Axes. I’m about 20 pages away from finishing and have barely started writing today so hopefully, I can get that number down significantly. As in, done by tomorrow. A girl can hope.)
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i had an
ax and i swung it. it was my ax, my only ax, and i was the ax’s only. [swing me, it pleaded so i did.] [love me, it cried so i did.] i nestled that ax inside of me and it ached for several days but over time, the pain dulled and i could see the purple stretch across the ocean, the way the color ruined the seaweed and moaned. [you will be another piece of grass, the seaweed hissed and i lay on the sand, hoping the grains would warm into glass, then into blade.] [but you must swing, the ax said and i lifted the ax and brought it onto the ground, severing the earth into hemispheres.] the ax giggled in my hands. it turned in my wrists. it slaughtered my fingers and i stared at the severed meat. i scratched my chest and the ax followed. [you can hold me tightly, the ax said. you can make me feel better. but if you cannot, then do not forget me.] the ax led me into a hungry room. the room had a mouth. the room had a tongue that obliterated windows and ate many small children with no faces. [where did their heads go, i asked.] [there are still heads, the ax said. stop saying nonsense. just swing me.] i rotated the ax around. i swung and cut a man in thirds. i swung and several children dangled from the ceiling, their spines twisted towards the hungry stars and the ax banged against my hips, slicing meat from the bone before sobbing, [never let the stars get close. or they will eat you. even if you are an ax. even if you are a bloody ghost.] i swung an ax but i wondered, am i a hungry ghost? have i always been a ghost or is this a new development, something yanked out of the dirt and smeared on my face? and can i let the ax get away? can i forget the ax existed when all i want to do is swing? can a ghost even swing an ax? can a ghost lift the ax high and swing it low and destroy all the little monsters holding fast to its stomach folds? i sat on the ground and the ax touched my cheeks. [you've done well, the ax said. but you must swing me in the basement and in the closet. you must swing me in the attic and kitchen. you must swing until all the whole bones are gone. can you do that? can you swing until everything is dust? can you swing until i can pry your wrists off your arms?] i nodded. i looked at the ax and thought of meat. i stared at the ax and the ax shuddered with glistening groin meat wrapped around a central bone and lacquered with grease until dry down the center. [but everything was lubricated, i said and the ax bit my palm.] [everything was no, the ax said. everything was dry to begin with. everything was wrong. even when the monster came out of the walls, all black sheets and gray shrouds. ignore the white eyes. never let them focus on your skin. or you will turn into spinal column. you will have to be hacked back to life. my bloody ghost. my best ax swing.] i curled up on the floor. i curled up until my abdomen ached and my back scratched. the ax slipped over my chest, carving fabric from my stomach, exposing my dying flesh. [when the eyes close, you must open them, the ax said.] it whispered it into my tongue, the blade pressed flat against my mouth and i shuddered, then moaned. [when the mouth opens, you must close it. when the ears whistle, you must silence them. and all the bodies must be made opposite of what they are. all the bones must be boiled into meat. all the meat must be dried into bone. all the hairs must become fat and all the fat must be rendered out. do you hear the growls? i emit them as prayers. i give them out as communion. now swing, little girl. swing that ax and let the walls ring, the ax screamed.] i swung the ax. sometimes, the ax swung me. we twirled around and around the room, feet knocking against wood, metal clanging against walls, and sometimes, the air turned red and i liked it better than when everything salty and fat went dead.
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(The small rabbit had a lovely time in my grandparents’ backyard bounding about and sniffing the fresh air. It was the first time she’s ever been allowed to run around outside. In writing news, the novel is halfway done. More than halfway. I’ll be happy when it’s over and I can move onto the next project, whichever one that will be.)
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(((dear cremated saints)))
i could have been holy. i was holy. for many years and many days. i was so holy, dead men collected my tears to escape purgatory. but then i burned. but then i sharpened. then i became the unholy ax and knocked the first bedroom door down. then i was not holy. then i was not sacred flesh and the dead men withered into dust and i suffered for all my trying sins, as if needles stuck to the insides of my knees and my elbow flesh was turned into mush. i tell a man, i’m going to eat your kidneys. but then i eat his head. and maybe a bit of his pelvis although i will not admit that to anyone but the brick walls. and if those brick walls dare tell a soul, dare tell a stair, i will toss them to the ground until it is disintegrated ash. the truth is this: i had a happy childhood. i prayed every night, clasping my hands together until my fingers were a knotted braid and i prayed every prayer i could get out of my stomach, all the hail holy queen enthroned in my mind and every our father i know you are with me and each blessed woman whose virginal sacrifice keeps me clean and of course, holy, holy, holy, i was made in the good lord’s invisible image. i prayed untl my throat went dry. and when i was done, i tore my eyes out of my head and threw them across the floor. but not because i hated prayer. because sometimes, the eyes went wrong and the world developed a thick gray fog i couldn’t bat away. and i cannot bat it away now, even when hands reach out of the swamp lands to get at me, fingers gristled and clenching, all the skin soldered to ruined wooden structures and if you can save me from the denseness, then i will deliver you to the jazz sounds so you can exist forever. because the ooooh eeee eeee wheee zip zip doo boo ha ha pah pah dee sound does not let me lift an ax. it does not allow my ax to stretch out in a circle, the meat twisted the wrong way, and a horrid stench trembling in the cellar wind. i could kill every man. i could make them sick with suffering. that is what i did in the bedroom. that is what i made the little children think when i told them to pray their oh lord deliver us from the basement dwelling until their throats were sore with so much deliverance. that is the truth of the cemetery in their backyard. i menstruated and tossed the blood in back. but the menstruation was unnatural. it should not have passed out of me but did regardless, its tiny fibers collected around a pelvic base, and sometimes, it was like a net and other times, it was a weave, and later, when i gave into the deliberate fog, it was a lasso, and i could not scratch the perfect ashes off my wrists. that is the secret. that is the secret i have been trying to keep for at least two hundred years: that when the ashes are gone, i might lose my sainthood but the ashes are painted on, they are sewn on, they are adhered and glued and stapled and so i cannot get them off no matter how i pry and suffer, even if i dig my nails around, i cannot get them free. but all you must know is simple. listen to the ooooh boo bee bah dah bah dah bah bah eeee whee whoo sound and know i cannot touch you, as if the trumpet is an ingested communion and all the skin is safe in the holy way, as if i were not so bloody with my ax face, with the dull blade coming out of my neck, blessed to me by the mummy saints living in their quartered chambers, green and black garlic cloves swathing their emaciated necks. (((love always, the ax who is sometimes more like a stench)))
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(The ax moves on, chopping and devouring. Good stuff. I’m about 1/3 of the way through. Hopefully, by the end of tomorrow, I’ll be somewhere closer to the halfway point. A girl can dream.)
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(((an ax dream)))
that night, i dreamed of seaweed and it lay stretched across my hand, stringy brown green yanking my fingers towards my wrists and i thought my bones would snap from the pressure but they did not even though i vomited calcium for days and my tongue was a constant white shade, something like tooth enamel but with more red, but not enough to make it pink, and between vomiting, bloated black eyes pierced my skin, but my skin was not skin, it was an ocean, it was a shoreline studded with seaweed and slick marrow waded through the plants, snapping vines as they moved and sometimes, the eyes, although they were not attached to visible lids, snapped tiny threads, almost like ligaments and each plucking snap sounded like a destroyed eyelash. i sobbed into the hand ocean and my tongue disappeared deep into my skin. it traveled miles without touching the bottom. navy blue water bubbled against my muscle. saline filled my mouth. i twisted and turned but my tongue refused to come up again, as if an anchor stuck to the tip but i knew it was an ax even though i couldn’t see the sharp edge. then i yanked and my tongue splintered. it broke into a thousand pieces, all like oceanic debris and i floated among the shards. i floated in the ocean contained in my hand and somehow i was two places at once holding myself while watching all the things my skin had created. an ax grew out of the splinters and the ax was heavy to the touch, tinged with bronzed red copper, and when i reached, the ax reared back and chopped quickly, severing the ocean into many beams and then the ax turned and swung at me, the blade catching the meat just above my knees and i squealed and yanked back. but my question is simple. if i created the ax but did not recognize it, how could it destroy me? and was it something like my womb child, a little metallic cell that divided and congealed, then grew some purposeful face meant to hurt me one day, to eat me up, or simply hack me into pieces with a quick chop chop to the ribs, and much later, to the softer parts below my belly button?
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(Happy Monday. The novel is coming along. With less than five months until my wedding, I’m typing my fingers off to finish this project and seven pending ones before heading down the aisle. A few days of not worrying about any novels would be nice. Although I’ll probably still end up scribbling a bit.)
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(((dear dam quartered
monarchy))) last night, i could not sleep over the sound of fragrant bone splitting in the fireplace. chop chop chop. cracking exacerbated my insomnia (i imagine though, that if my condition were true insomnia, i might eventually give into my exhausted urges but this insomnia, now claimed as MY INSOMNIA, has kept my eyes open for nearly five years and always with the chop chop sound) until i scratched the walls. i wrote my name. i wrote my age. then i lied, telling the plaster stories about when i raped the moonlight, then turned around and directed a blue flame at the sun, igniting gravity before imploding the earth. i never did those things. and i’ve forgotten what my face looks like. i stare at a raging ocean but you know there aren’t any oceans near here. i stare at a body of water but i might as well just be staring at acid waiting for it to explode into my eyes. and if i can tear the meat… do you know the meat? it’s the same one i store in my head for safekeeping but then my head is a butcher shop and everyone knows what happens to meat when it clings to the butcher place. it suffers. it hacks into pieces. it trembles upon the hook and that is the end of the meat. that is the end of me. can you self-cannibalize your own brain? and if you sip your bloody nose, does that mean you have completed the evolution into a vampire? take your sinew and pass away. take your sinew and drain it in the farmer’s basin. i hear him shouting. he lives inside the chop chop. he bangs around my cavernous place until the meat hooks shimmy. shimmy steak. shimmy hooks! shimmy until my eyes bleed yellow mucus in homage to the ax slaughters. do you keep the blood on your knees? i know who you are. all of you. i keep a crudely sketched picture of your souls pasted to my forehead and i want to carry your sinew around in my pocket so i am always privy to dripping warmth. give me my meat and i will share yours. or show me how many ways you can split your spine into thirds. or show me the stench of your ribs. if i had a mother figure, she ate my tonsils out of my mouth. and if i had a grandmother figure, she quivered in the closet, bleeding out prayers like rosary beads. and if i had a father figure, he rattled his jaws up and down until his teeth moved like hymnal wheels. and if i had a grandfather figure, he narrowed his throat until it was a tiny splintered needle ready to stab the first incestuous eye breaking the awning. and if i had a sister figure, then she wrapped her legs around my shoulders and put her knees together to choke me. and if i had a brother, he cracked his ground meat against the floor and waited for a sausage pulp to form. onward and outward. fill your gums with breadcrumbs. but do not let the birds bite. do not let their beaks come through your cheeks. and especially, do not let them tenderize your tongue. do not let them prick and pet and poke and pad and pelt until your bones tear. have we met before? you and i? the sin and the black tar? have we met and if we have, did i like you? did i threaten to drown you or hack you? did i promise to drive the ax down the center of your face or run it lightly in circles, dividing the bones into hemispheres before they are fragments? i want to eat you. i want to scrape your meat out of your skin and wear it like a hat. and then, when it is fully saturated with dead rain cells, i want to slather the wet meat on my tongue and slurp the muscle down. and then i want to yank you around my neck and hope you won’t pretend to be a snake. don’t you dare constrict me. and don’t you try to slit my hands on the needle. i am not a princess. not that i am a man. i haven’t touched between my legs in so long. i just yank the brown out of my navel and string it between my eyes. come here! come here! the father says to come here! and if you do not come here, the father will nail you to a mirror. every dimension will bleed. all the reflections will die simultaneously. and i will roll around in a comatose state, unwilling to let the bowels move. but i cannot let the bowels move. i have no intestines. i stripped them from my chest and braided them into a necklace while screaming, YOU SHOULD REMEMBER THE VINEGAR MARCH! YOU SHOULD REALIZE THE SACRIFICES MADE BY THE MUSTARD SEED. AND WHEN THAT YELLOW TRADED THE WHITE FOR A SPICY BEAD, THE MUSCLE COMPLEX BECAME TOO MUCH. NOW REMEMBER ME. NOW REMEMBER OR THE FATHER FIGURE WILL COME GET YOU WITH THE AX POINT BALANCED IN THE CENTER OF HIS NOXIOUS HANDS. but stop listening to me. when the soup can adheres to my face, i ramble. and when i ramble, my stone piece slathers the egg wash. and the trembling hearts live on in my bedroom. although i should use that room as a kitchen. i never sleep there, but i do eat there. i should try sleeping elsewhere, with my head planted against a needle wall or shoulder glands bloated with salt water until the rushing blood washes down the ax blades. the celestial mouths whispered: IF YOU BITE OUR STAR DUST, THEN RECALL THE UNIVERSAL PORTRAYAL OF ONE HOODED WOLF TO THE OTHER. THE BEAST CREATURE SQUEALS: I AM NOT THE FLESH THAT WAS PORTRAYED BEFORE THE OTHER.: BUT NOW, TEAR OUR MEDIEVAL PIECES INTO A CORSETED LOIN AND HOLD OUR GAS ABOVE OUR PANGS. hence the meat. how it is and always is and what is and when is and gladly is, velvet bones skewering my knees until i am limp. i want to kiss you, before, after, and during the hacking process. and i want to see the ax drive down, into a monstrosity of blades, and if that happens, please forgive me. i didn’t create the sharpness. (((sincerely, the homunculus wishing for a moment of unconsciousness)))
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(I had some trouble starting my new project. I wrote the main plot points out but the actual story refused to work with me. So I read a little bit and tried to figure out some issues from a craft form. The main problem was that the story was progressing in a ‘they did this, they did that, then that happened’ sort of way. I wanted something… more. So thus, the reading inspired me and I was able to focus the story a little more. This story is based around a series of ax murders that occurred between the 19th and early 20th century. Lizzie Borden and the Villisca ax murders, anyone?)
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in the dark,
as cold, dark lake waters wash over uneven brown desert shores studded by petrified wooden stumps, a small rusted ax rattles against the broken windowpanes while the children’s raw meat innards hang out of their fatty little mouths. the children slap their tongue tips against the stomach muscles and push the meat back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, while the ax chops against the floor. ::: hush little bloody, don’t you dare spew, all the little redness fills you ::: the children do not move in their beds aside from swinging their tongues. [if we eat the muscle mass, will the ax be kind to us, the children ask and metal slabs lure them to bed, the soft metal hacking against the creaking bed springs crik-o-crik-o-crik-ing the children's minds into unconsciousness.] out of the darkness, the lake runs red as the ax blood soaks through the dirt. wash dirt, wash. the ground fluctuates with ax heads. the ax tears the ground apart and metal washes down the walls. stuck deep in their beds, their eyes tear and part. [mother? can we have our tongues back, the children ask, lifting their tongues out of their mouths until the tendons splinter.] the children hit their heads against the walls and axes spring from the plaster. axes roll down the stairs, tearing the carpeting up, slicing the wood up. charcoal drifts out of the dark, the midnight undulating in black-slicked waves that lift up the trees and develop sharp edges attached to solid bases. in the dark, someone took an ax and slashed the air. someone took an ax and ruined the walls. someone took an ax and then someone mauled the mother and father, the children asleep in their cotton sacks, and finally, shattered the witnessing mirrors into three million sparkling slits. [you are no more, that someone said and broke the dirt with the edge of a metal spade rusted to the point of cracking in half.] the children roll in their beds, resting their cheeks against the ax heads. [mother, we hear you moving through the darkness, the children whisper. father? are you in the attic? someone sits on the basement stairs, crying loudly and wondering why the ax hurts our skin so much. mother? are we inside out? are we turned into the night? mother? how can we cry? and why does our father stink of the cold-cured meat?] their tongues twitch with dead muscles and as the blood runs across the floors and dribbles, the muscle dries. it dries stiff and dry. and bloodless.
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(I meant to post this yesterday but was busy finishing the last few novel pages. Oh well. The final pages were a struggle. I think I stayed too close to the source material. It limited the story line. Never again. The next projects I have planned will be a little easier. I gave myself a bit more leeway with the stories. Also, welcome to May. Rabbit, rabbit. I can’t believe April is already over. Geez.)
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(((ALICE blue remembers…)))
i remember when the hatter released me from the water molecules that had carried the red queen to the after wonder and i was so afraid that i swallowed a radiator’s corresponding rust. i remember when the hatter body came to me in the middle of the night and prayed over my stomach that i might become the greatest blue queen the WONDER place has ever known. i remember that there were men in the center of the mushroom forest and they removed their eyes from their heads and melted into a fungal puddle. i remember the ugly hens born of the red queen’s defecated matter and when they pecked, their heads fell apart in a sudden appearance of dark brown things that lurched around the midnight time, then screamed with both eyes turned into a canceled tree limb. i remember when the hatter first kissed me and i thought my tongue was pregnant with all our beady children wrapped in a thin steel wrap similar to plastic and when the first bumps broke apart, my throat flooded with amniotic fluid. i remember when the first festering began as a hideous rash so dark that the hatter thought the plaque consisted of nighttime. i remember when all the skin trembled and all the blood thickened in my pulse. i remember when i stopped breathing for seven thousand years and the asphyxiation made my nerves collide like tiny atomic bombs. i remember when the red queen slaughtered her old jaws and left the mandibles strung up from a ceiling fan for the happy king to make into a rotten soup stinking of dried mandrakes and alcoholic raspberries stuck to cemetery dirt. i remember the granules that came out of the white queen’s stinking bowels and how i wore them like a crown sprinkled on my scalp. i remember sour water flowing through the countryside and when the grass turned dark black with the ashy resin, the stomach muscles cramped. i remember how the bone fractures carved a name into the yellow queen’s tongue and i thought i might bleed into her mouth as a way to keep her cheeks suspended in the gelatin body. i remember what the mirror looked like when it shattered on a snowy little face and the apple burst out of the silver frame. i remember how many upper feeders fought teeth like nails and the arm muscles that nailed the meat. i remember what the garlic did when it touched the yellow witch’s forehead and yes, there are many witches running in the purple fields and if those vines strangle the muscles, then there are wooden bowels to muck the singular beams. i remember how many digestive quivers i couldn’t eat without stuffing my mouth with fingertips.
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(I’m coming close to the end of the Alice novel and am planning the next project. Good stuff. I can’t wait to finish these final stories. Hopefully, I’ll be done by Monday.)
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a mother queen
burns a glass shard over my face. I WANT TO SEE HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE FOR YOUR BONES TO CRAWL OUT OF YOUR SKIN, the mother queen whispers and strokes my cheeks with her honeycomb fingernails until my skin curls away, the heat shriveled and turned into ice cream scrapes. TELL ME, ALICE GIRL. DO YOU PRICK YOUR FOOT ON A CHURCH SPIRE AND BECOME COMATOSE IN THE TOWER FLOOR? DO YOU EAT SOMEONE’S CORED ORANGE SEGMENT UNTIL THE GLASS WEBBING COVERS YOUR THROAT? OR DOES A CANNIBAL HUNT YOU IN THE MUSHROOM FIELDS? DO YOU TAKE A KNIFE TO YOUR WRISTS AND DISSOLVE INTO A FOAM EXPANSE? TELL ME. PLEASE. PRAY TELL, WHAT KIND OF SINEW DO YOU THINK I CAN LIVE WITHIN, the mother queen snaps. she rolls her shoulders and her bones tear into many large pieces. i vomit glass. i throw glass at the mother queen’s jowls and she smacks her head against the angry mirror. YOU WILL NOT TEAR ME INTO PIECES, the mother queen screams. YOU WILL NOT TELL ME I AM NOT YOUR MOTHER. I AM THE ONLY MOTHER YOU EVER NEED. I AM THE ONLY MOTHERING UTERUS YOU SHOULD EVER SPEAK ABOUT. AND WHEN YOU PRAY, PRAY TO MY FALLOPIAN LOINS UNTIL MY HEAD THROBS WITH TERRIBLE MUSCLES. YOU ARE A HORRIBLE DAUGHTER. MAKE ME SICK, LITTLE ALICE. MAKE ME SICK. OR THROW ME OUT. OR TEAR MY RIBS APART AND FEED OFF THE HEARTS STUCK INSIDE. the mother queen spools yellow yarn around her fingers. she weaves a tapestry of her spleen actions and the organs throb repeatedly, the flesh coming apart in long strings that wind around the bobbin heads. [mother queen, i don't want to be stuck in your muscles. i don't want to cling to your loins. i just want to lie in your stomach until my voice aches. you are a terrible mother. really, you are. you are a destroyed carbon remnant and i want to keep your liver on my shoulders, i hiss.] the red queen prances around my rib crescents and enamel shrivels around the heart pieces. YOU SHOULD REMEMBER THAT WHEN I EAT YOUR OHIO IDENTITY, I WILL BURN YOUR BOWELS INTO A BROKEN ASH CLOT. CLING TO THAT MEAT. OR SHOVEL IT INTO THE OVEN, the mother queen says and prances into a pot belly stove, copper streaming out of her torn esophagus like a spread of liquid fireworks.
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(And the Alice stories continue…)
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but what if
the blue girl is really the yellow girl and the white queen is not white any more but ivory? and the red queen does not carry heart clusters on her shoulder but edges across a dessert decorated by many sloshed spleens until her throat aches and bile pours out of the small slits in her pectoral muscles. the yellow girl prances around with a lizard on her shoulders. [hello, meat, the yellow girl shouts and leaps over the ivory woman's head until her jaws splinter into thirteen equal segments.] the yellow girl lifts her dress over her head and turns her pelvis from side to side, tasting the air molecules with her thigh bones. [i am meaty ambrosia, the yellow girl says. i am the meatiest girl in the world. do not call me ALICE. call me JOANNA. i am JOANNA, the yellow girl. i am the most yellow girl in the wonder place. look at my skin, how i grow with the jaundice aura. i should be gangrenous. that is how yellow i really am.] she drops her dress back in place and grins frantically. [look at me, she says and yanks the holy cat out of the ground.] the cat scratches her skin and JOANNA bleeds thickly. her body clings to the blood bath. the cat writhes around in the puddle, soaked whiskers drowning in the tar-like elixir. [there is meat out there, JOANNA whispers, yanking the cat into her chest.] she clutches the face and the cat body dusts the ground. [do you know that i use my breast bone as a knife, JOANNA whispers into the cat ear. i just lower my jaw and slash the meat across the stomach chamber. so simple. all of it. the stench and the fat. the bones and the back end. oh yes. and if i lower my teeth, i can turn the stomach into a wearable bag. so simple.] the yellow girl flings the cat onto a dirt pile and turns away. [have you seen the yellow fibers yet, she asks. have you heard the old queen's splintered bowels? because she has no skin and if i continue growing barley in my throat, she might be able to smell me across the wasteland. that isn't any fun. i want to eat the ugly monsters that tear the caterpillar into pieces. can you hunt them? i'll wear you like a tiger and inject your tail with the rabies virus. that is the only cellular growth that can defeat the old queen biologically.] the yellow girl lies across the ground and crumbles dirt onto her tongue. [there. i am blessed. by the ground queen. by the dirt queen. by the dust queen. i am blessed by the priest queen. and the crimson queen. and the lost queen before that. and the hidden queen after that, the yellow girl says.] she spits yellow dust on the ground and wrinkles her nose as a vinegar stench floods her nostrils. yellow gelatin dribbles out of her eyes. YOU ARE SOFTENED GUTS, the cat body says, rising out of molten mud. YOU ARE THE YELLOW GIRL WHO SHOULD HAVE NEVER EXISTED. AND NOW YOU ARE HUNGRY FOR THE PURE PROTEIN. BUT REMEMBER TO CHEW THE PLASTIC BETWEEN BITES. YOU DON’T WANT TO TEAR YOUR THROAT MUSCLES BEFORE YOUR STOMACH IS AWKWARDLY ARRANGED. AFTER ALL, HEY DIDDLE HI DIDDLE HO DIDDLE DIDDLE HEY YO. the cat giggles and blood red gills erupt from the large crescent mouth. [i knew yellow once before, the yellow girl says. i also knew cats. but they aren't alive anymore. i locked them in a brick cage to fester.] the crescent cat slices across her knees. YOU ARE PRETTY. BUT I WILL EAT YOUR HALF POINTS WITHOUT TASTING ANY MEAT ON MY TONGUE, the cat says and slurps yellow fat off her silver capped fingernails.
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(April is progressing nicely. This month seems unseasonably warm and sunny. I keep expecting more rain but roadway signs warn about the potential for outdoor fires because everything is do dry.)
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heave your supernatural
bodies into the elongated abyss, ALICE of the blue variety, while your pink sisters, skewered on meat logs and subjugated anomalies twist skyward, their orange glisten reeking in the dirt and if you and i, the last great queen of so many great queens, all descended upon their mortality like crows on the tailed mushroom patch, lives in your stomach like the only one-celled parasite you will ever know in this consecutive heart beat of king flesh on the chess board. oh, ALICE, of the many faced queen, of her tremendous muscles, of her constantly groveling skeletal architecture trapped in the WONDERLAND church for thousands of years amidst the rotten ash and saint glands placed on the altar top, i’ve known about you before you were a blue girl. i remember your hair when you were a yellow girl and before that, when you were a pink girl, and far past that, when you were the neon orange girl glowing with metal radiation. and you skipped with a skull strapped over your face and your mouth eye pretended to focus on a food source despite the circumcision of the hatter’s veil in the middle of the throne piece. i should have thrown you away when your blue skin was just a cyst on my shoulder, just chopped you up with a scissor tip until you bled tea into the mushroom lands and what good would that have done me when the slices scarred over with thick tissue and several muscular hemorrhages? at least i and my heart, i and my kidneys, i and my long lost vertebrae, would be rid of your bitter taste. but i didn’t cut you. and you grew big and strong dressed in your blue caul fat and a trembling sheath of blonde follicles pretending to be a halo on your face and each time you came near me, i vomited because your oppressive aura made the pink ground long to be an ocean and the hatter couldn’t stop bleeding from his ears. i sip tea to spite you. i spit the tea to scald you. and i ruin the drainage clots out of sadness because the sullen energy revealing your lovely face makes me think of steak marbles and the clotted yellow butter shoved between the protein grains.
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(Evidently, there have been numerous brush fires in the area. Environmental spontaneous combustion. I’m still participating in NaPoWriMo but I keep getting sidetracked with posting them so oh well.)
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(((WONDERLAND doomsday #1)))
the world cracks like an egg shell and ALICE falls through a junction between the splintered hemispheres, her stomach caved in like the hatter’s waterlogged molecules stuffed in digested membranes. balloons in the mercury sky whisper HIGH RISK OF OUTDOOR FIRES – TAKE PRECAUTIONS until ALICE’s eyes drop out of her head and shatter like glass bulbs. [what did you do with my cotton balls, the white queen asks, piercing her eyelashes with thin needles rusted through the eyes.] she blinks quickly, the needles tapping against one another with a faint :::ping ping ping::: sound. ALICE’s face implodes until her head has become a giant chin made of flayed hatter skin. [skin or sin, the white queen screams and climbs into a boiling tub of fermented blood cells heavy with attached iron tails.] ALICE pats her head against the cracked castle remnants of the white queen’s excavated intestines. [as the cast iron woman once whispered while the oven pieces hacked at her jugular parts and tore through the softer bone pieces to reveal that chunk of enamel that once belonged to her tooth. then she leaned into the tainted charcoal of the great tonsil mass and whispered, do not forget that last copper square, before she sank into the thorny death of a fat-induced vein quarry. alas! alas! i cannot remember the way her eyes stretched into a plastic sheet to teach dirt a lesson. have you seen the way it blooms into an algae canopy, the white queen hums, unhinging her fiercely devoted gums to accommodate a clashing metal jawbone carved from a mushroom saint's femur.] ALICE tears a needle out of the white queen’s eyelash and jabs the air with the point. the white queen slaps the sides of her head. [no, she screeches. no! this is not right. the oven should never have legs. the oven should remain as a disembodied mouth, heaving as gaseous planes rush into the tongued expanse to shift and grind together. and what can we do when our faces shred the ground? the ground, ALICE! do you hear the ground? it whispers our prayers for us. and we cannot help anyone. we cannot tell the hatter to make the galactic gravity warmer for our comfort. we never matter in the grand scheme of this meat chunk and that stew something. let us cling together while the hatter does his business in the corner, his bowels vibrating with collapsed ships on the frozen tundra creating a horizon of dense metal and connected rust spots. and how should we end everything? how shall we steal the pig to make the bread rise in lieu of bacterial yeast?] the white queen reduces her choke hold on the bloody sky bands. orange slices fall out of the cloaked white, sharpened piths scratching ALICE’s face as she scrambles to cover her mouth with a thin plastic foam circle. [it is for my eternal respiration, she says, poking her tongue out of the circle center. and this is my diameter! all hail the way my radii come and go.]
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ALICE, made out
of the red queen’s lost fermentation, sticks her tongue into the bowels of a glass jar. [what have you done, the red queen asks and skewers ALICE on a metal plated bar. ALICE's lost mother was a whore who played with the hatter but swelled with king. [it was a fatty accident, the mother said, her hands studded with hormonal rings.] for several years, ALICE scraped her tongue with resin-covered shame and moaned. she lifted the meat and nailed it to rotten apple core stars until the sky was domed. but that was long ago and now ALICE makes a mess of her shredded thigh bones. when the red queen slips in and out of glass, ALICE leaves calcium in many zones. [this is the probable skin, ALICE says and smacks her hands against her sliced skin.] the red queen eats a window and tilts her head back until her jaws release light gin. ALICE positions herself under the drip and slurps alcohol until her spleen cramps. the organs move beneath her muscles, spewing citrine bile until her flesh is damp. [i'll drink you, the red queen screams and corks her mouth with a wine bottle vise.] ALICE wrings her skin in a goblet while the queen chops the hatter into a fine dice.
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(The best thing about working with Alice in Wonderland pieces right now is that they are perfectly suited for especially abstract pieces. It’s especially true today, since NaPoWriMo’s task is to write a homophonic piece based on another language. So today’s piece alternates between Spanish and English. The point is that I would write a sentence in Spanish, then play with the way it sounds in English. Honestly, it’s kind of fun.)
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la reina roja,
perdida en el cielo, come cinco mil manzanas de plata. la, la, la, reins rowing, haha, haha, haha. purr die die in the sea, lower than my eyes, come sin with mills man saw on a plate. y entonces, la niña azul encuentra un gusano gordo con muchos ojos cocinaron con vino. why, in tombs and sense, la, la, NINA azure in coins and tra la las opens her eyes so wide, her stomach sneezes. [gus could not stop me, the girl says and goads her gourds until they come apart on one sinew tongue tucked in a sheet of vines.] pero, los monstruos malos se retuercen a través del hígado de ALICE y su hombre verde. per the ALICE bowels, loss is too much for her monster maladies and malarkey to see return to the traveling road strewn with dells and dips heaving around ALICE’s neck until ombre growths drop off her shoulders and flip the dirt. o, ALICE dulce, princesa de las calles del corázon, ¿rompiste? ALICE dons a robe of hearts and prances over frozen culls daring the cortisone medication to seep out of the rotten apple core strewn across the mercury carpeting, romping in the destroyed liver turrets. despues, ALICE llora cuando HATTER devora las setas colorados. la, la, la, la. ALICE.
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(Today’s piece is a prose shadorma. Instead of working with syllables, I use sentences. The scheme is 3-5-3-3-7-5. Also, ||| represents a stanza break.)
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ALICE eats a
mushroom while scorching her back on a man’s sunburn. [i might roast you into a dull gray oblivion, the man says, tipping his purple top hat back from his forehead.] ALICE strokes the fungal cap and trips on the sprouted root winding around spare ankles left below a concrete tree. ||| [how did your bones become trees when the blue sky stays with its back on the cliff face, ALICE asks, turning in circles.] she taps her fingers against a spine draping across the sun face, melting her nails into wax. [if you like cats, when i have a place we can visit together, the man whispers, yanking the hat off his spoiled head.] ALICE presses her ears to the floor and breathes into the dirt until her lungs rattle. [i hate cats, she whispers and plucks a transparent metal whisker from the inside of her nostrils.] ||| the man shoves ALICE into a bony basket suspended from a large fur tree. [your eyes have to stay dry while i carry you, he whispers.] ALICE pricks her eye meat with a wood splinter to drain the tear ducts into a large dirt pile. ||| [will you feed me to a monstrous uterus consisting of compressed parsley flakes stolen from a dead woman's thigh meat, ALICE asks.] the man sticks his top hat into his head and chews the wide brim until his jaws ache from chewing. [i am bringing you to the place of immortal meat, the man says and drags ALICE through the forest space.] ||| she slides on the floor and drops into a small hole born of the ruined stomach trees. [where am i going, she screams, tasting sour oranges in the air.] stones beat against her temple, bruising her skin like apple meat. bluish mouths protrude from the rocks, serrated jaws ricocheting around the tunnel. hooked teeth catch ALICE’s arm muscles, tearing alphabets into the meat. [what does the tunnel mean, ALICE shrieks and the stone floor stops.] she slides into the air and hovers above pea pod gardens for several minutes. ||| [make sure you eat your vegetables, the man says behind her.] he falls into the pods and green bulbs cover his face. ALICE smacks stomach first against the peas. she bounces and the peas rush into her mouth, melting into soup consistency on her tongue. [don't chew, the peas scream when ALICE's molars settle around their parchment skin.]
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(Apologies for the excruciatingly late posting. I finished the Angler novel and then I bought my wedding dress and so posting suffered. The newest novel is about Alice in Wonderland. I felt compelled. Anyway, here are the three missing pieces. Enjoy.)
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NaPoWriMo Day 8
(((soliloquy of the
dead red queen))) mushroom caps grew on my tongue while i swallowed the swollen air and choked my throat. [are you happy now, the walls asked while i hacked hearts glued to the wallpaper.] i am the queen of parallel structure branches crawling out of a dead man’s mouth. i am the goddess of syntax dust thrown on the floor for muddy feet to mutilate. have you seen the other queen, the one with the thousand eyes protruding from her barked wrists? she keeps a copper radiator sewn into her back end so her spine cannot escape when she plays the flamingo games. [i had skin to share with the blue-eyed face, that copper denizen whispered.] she unscrewed her marble bulbs and shattered the glass frames on an ALICE mirror jutting out of the dining room wall. [an ALICE part, an ALICE slumber, she shrieked and shattered the mirror with a quick hammer swing.] i cried with my eyes stitched closed.
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NaPoWriMo Day 9
ALICE, in forest
glades marked by terrible mouths skewered with fang-like teeth, wanders in circles near the caterpillar stomach. [i can't hear your rumbling, she whispers, pressing her hands on the worm's bowels.] the caterpillar yanks away from her, his pores smoked with spicy pepper powder and too many salt crystals turned bright blue in the royal air. [do you have a queenly spine, the caterpillar asks. do you have all the blue fungi necessary to keep your innards wrapped around your wrists?] the caterpillar drops onto the floor and slithers around ALICE’s ankles. [you are skin, he screams. you are good skin. you are a forest of skin. the skin trees stir for you. they open their muscle and yank the arteries away. and in the autumn plumes, the vein leaves drift off the skin trees and rot into a butcher shop's carpet. do you eat that renewed skin? do you ingest it and wait for the red queen's dead curse to begin?] ALICE quivers in a tiny rabbit hole lined with palm tree burrs. [you will have to remove the muscle before you grow another, the caterpillar whispers and bites the tippy tip of his tail off.] corpse appendages dangle off his ligaments. they sway back and forth with the grace of a mushroom pendulum. [broken little nibble, the caterpillar murmurs and guts his tongue with the scythe brim of a mad hatter's favorite hat piece.] ALICE rolls into the blossomed cannibal flowers and their many jugular seeds, pollen meat turned into grains and settled into her knee joints. [what will the newborns do, she asks.] the caterpillar pries his jaws apart and nails them onto the moon ledge above his head. [wait until they bloom, he whispers and fades.]
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NaPoWriMo Day 10
dead red queen
tears her | heart in two | then skewers her holy oven. | are you the worst queen | of all cadaver | royalty, lovely ALICE girl asks. | she plays with bony faces | made of red | cycles stored in ashy fireplaces. | i have more skin than | your bones, ALICE | cries and needles her thighs. | she marinates the punctured flesh | in seasoned buttermilk | until her muscle has softened. | the dead red queen chops | lovely ALICE into | thick poultry cutlets breaded hard. | let us eat, she shouts | and slices meat | with her sharpened front teeth. | ALICE plays with emasculated eyes | turned bright yellow | with glass-coated mercury droplets. | we had skin once before | she says. moon | faces graze her farmed stomach. | in the wonderlandian fields, bowels | arrange as milk | teats waiting for the slaughter. | do you wear meat necklaces | as a sign | of your royal heart privileges, | a hungry queen sneezes in | the oven wrapped | in her rendered tongue stretch.
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she rolls azure
eyes as if all the gelatin is a stone made out of compressed azure ocean and if that sand, if the crushed gravel of her bones, can make azure from yellow, and later, red from azure, she can live forever as the hungry fish goddess, companion of the fish god, her bowels tossed in azure sauce because the best flavorings are blue variants left in the muddy dark for too long, and her azure bowels slash the ocean floor. they yank bone grout from the great azure mouth and heave it at the surface where one azure hurricane after the next floods inland rivers and tears moisture from the dirt. [you cannot have everything in a blue shade, the male cautions her.] the ANGLER digs her fins into the mud. her azure teeth sparkle inside her azure chin reflecting off thousands of glassy azure teeth that rupture whenever she speaks, the enamel points individual cysts heaving against her gently praying body. [but i want azure in my eyes. and i want azure on my tongue. and if my bowels can become azure rocks, slimy sapphires broken into my fish bladder stones, then i might be happy for once in the darkness lacking all azure qualities, the ANGLER says and swallows the bile welling up in her throat.] it is azure bile, the best kind, one associated with fins and spikes and fatty tissue left on a hot grill for hours until the white curdles to clotted milk consistency. MOTHER OF THE AZURE FACE, HALLOWED BE YOUR BLUE, THE TURQUOISE COME AND THE TEAL BE DONE, IN WATER AS IT IS DONE IN THE SAND. GIVE US THE DAILY BLUE AND FORGIVE US OUR YELLOWS, AS WE FORGIVE REDS WHICH BLISTER AGAINST US. AND LEAD US NOT INTO GREEN TIDES, AND DELIVER US FROM PLUM, AMEN. HOLY AZURE, MOTHER OF SAPPHIRE, PRAY FOR OUR VIOLET, NOW AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR PURPLE, AMEN. HAIL AZURE, FULL OF BLUE, THE ORANGE IS WITH THEE. BLESSED ARE YOU, AMONGST AQUAMARINE, AND BLESSED IS THE NAVY OF THY WOMB, CERULEAN, the sand murmurs into the ANGLER’s azure gut, grains praying against azure skin and prying into azure scales. FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN. IN THE NAME OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE SILENCE OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE FRUIT OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE STENCH OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE SACRISTY OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE BOWELS OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE CATACOMBS OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE STOMACH OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE STONE YARDS OF AZURE, AMEN. IN THE AZURE OF AZURE, SLAUGHTERED BY THE BLUE, AMEN.
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Quick note: tomorrow will be the last of the Angler pieces. Monday will be the start of a brand new topic, which is always fun.
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eat your| children,
ANGLER foam. eat your| broken male festering in your bones like| a syringe with a needle snapped off the end.| yellow fish| watch your eyes to see which way the| pupils might jump while your fish god nuns| proceed through the coral beds, red rock hanging| off their splintered| tongues and every meat is the better meat| while you take communion with your abyss-| filled gills. sob, fish head, severed on the human | hook. sob with| your tail skin torn ragged and black with| decomposition. putrid salt gods. come, priest| fish and eat the skin clotted already with another’s| skin. what shark| fin breaks your back like pointed mallets| against the spinal column stretch. you are good| skin, fish. you are good skin sheltered in a palace| of red gelatin.| i’ve seen your scales before, washing up on hurricane| shores studded by poison spines yanked directly| from your blood bowels and if the red tuna steaks| decide to wear| your flayed teeth as a head adornment, then let them| pray to the jeweled fluid dripping off the sharp|tips while you work your tongue into drilled cheeks.| hallowed be your| skin. and hallowed be your messy contractions as the| scarlet algae blooms move in circles across your| fatty surface, blistering the scales until white beads| of oceanic butter| seizes and snags, the dull menstrual cramps afflicting| your fin swatches while the priest fish bow their| heads in recognition of your torn up innards mauled| by the male fish.| oh, male sinew. oh male, drag your parasitic ligaments| through the esophagus tunnels and wait for holy| sinew to settle into your organic nuts and bolts rusted| over with tidal| motions punctured by wooden arches resembling church| groans in catacomb hollows slaughtered in the dark.| do you regret the rotten darkness filled with heavy ink| suctioned out of| bloated kidneys slick with abdominal flesh pulverized into| bulky cysts rupturing at the first sign of oxygenation. my| ANGLER nurtures the bloated beef tossed into blue| water. come here| sectioned cardiac. come here, ANGLER jaws. come here| and nestle into sickened livers tossed in an acid bath turned| dark red by the pickled skin hung in the sun to dry hard.
|= line break, if the poem were written in verse.
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before the ANGLER
existed, there was a fish god with wide arms and many barbed crosses sticking out of its plated sides. WHAT IS THIS PLACE, the fish god asked, red eyes twitching and silver pupils dropping out of the dense gelatin. the fish god rested his throat on the sand bed, weighing the underlying bone down. he breathed the sand into his mouth. DID I MAKE THIS PLACE, the fish god asked but there was no one to ask. he turned his head and inky water passed him. it spiraled downward, a nautical tornado of viscous fluid pulling the fish god’s tails. the fish god yanked his body forward. he gnashed his teeth together. I WILL CALL THIS OCEAN, the fish god said. he snapped his jaws. YES. OCEAN. AND THIS FLUID IS WATER. IT WILL BE A DARK PLACE OF MEAT. SKIN! THERE WILL BE SKIN. the fish god sank into the ink and buried his belly in the sand. I AM LONELY, the fish god said. I WANT COMPANY. he drove his tongue into his bottom jaw and flicked the tip back and forth, stimulating his gag reflex. his throat ached. he vomited and egg yolks poured out of his stomach. the yolks spun around his head, tails separating from whites. black eyes protruded from the yellow yolks and blinked rapidly. ARE YOU FATHER? ARE YOU FATHER, the yolks asked. they brushed the fish god’s skin. the fish god roses from the sand. he rolled his eyes towards the shimmering blue surface. AS LONG AS I AM THE FISH GOD, NO FISH WILL EVER LIVE ABOVE THE WATER. THE BURNING SUN WILL DESTROY EVERYTHING, SCORCHING THE SKIN AS IF IT WERE RESTING ON A CEDAR PLANK. STAY SUBMERGED, MY CHILDREN. DO NOT BITE AT THE HOOK THAT MIGHT LURE YOU TOWARDS THE LIGHT. RESIST THE MEAT STUCK TO THE EDGE. IF YOU MUST EAT, MAKE CERTAIN YOUR FOOD IS FREE-FLOATING, the fish god said. milky bone fluid poured from his scales. the liquid congealed over his body, hardening into an oyster-like shell. the fish god’s mouth sealed. his gills stitched shut. he gasped once and rested, yolks bursting and splitting around him, filling the seawater with his immaculate image.
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(((the ANGLER blues)))
oh, the ANGLER keeps her skeletal skin on tight… that little ANGLER pulls her scaly skin so tight… don’t worry about the skin, fear her heavy bite… her slithering male eats the sand like bloody meat… oh, a ruined male eats sulfur sand like raw meat… but all the meat he finds, he’s not allowed to eat… in her bone cathedral, the ANGLER tries to sleep… housed in the dark bone hole, the ANGLER falls asleep… and when she dreams, her ink soul sinks into the deep… the dragonfish pass the sun with a stomach face… the glassy teeth wear red intestines for a face… and when he bites, it’s a display of holy grace… oh, the ANGLER lives with her metal mouth screwed shut… that cannibal ANGLER forces her hinged jaws shut… and while she eats, the male bites until he cuts.
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housed in her
bone home, enamel pillars spiraling out of the darkness, the ANGLER rocks back and forth, slicing her fins lightly on spiked joints while the male practices wrapping his mouth around grains of sand slightly larger than his throat circumference. the ANGLER allows sand to crust on her jaws, the minerals growing in thick layers, then falling apart like algae membranes. [where are the priest fish, she asks and the male spits the sand out of his mouth.] it lands lightly on the floor, then disappears into the trillions of other grains its exact size and color. [the priest fish have gone to the cross place, the male says. you can hear them praying over the marriage weeds.] the male cocks his head slightly and the priest fish chanting moves into the bone chambers, the sound carried on the currents. the ANGLER grinds her teeth and the bone chamber fills with glassy enamel shavings. she rests her head on the floor and sighs. YOUR GUT, THE EVERLASTING FLESH BORN OF THE FISH GOD’S EYES, BEGS FOR THE NAUTICAL COMMUNION, THE SKIN OF THE SCALE AND THE SUCTION OF THE TENTACLE. TAKE YOUR VOWS BY OFFERING A DROP OF YOUR BLUE BLOOD. COME, FISH. DISAPPEAR INTO THE SAVIOR MOUTH WHILE WE TEAR VEILED MEMBRANES OFF OUR MARITAL EYES, the priest fish proclaim. the ANGLER tilts her head and watches the bone ceiling arch far above her body. [what if the bones collapse, the male asks.] [then we die, the ANGLER says.] she spreads her fins out and presses her stomach against the sand until her scales scrape clean. [[[THE MALE: let us exchange our vows again. let us be husband and wife willingly. THE ANGLER: no. i was a dissolution of our marriage bond. we can swim clockwise around the bone chamber and sever the tail bonds. THE MALE: i can't swim independently. i'm needy. i don't know how to live in the darkness without your scales containing me. THE ANGLER: i will tear your flesh from your bones. i will ruin your brains. i will force the seaweed to give us a divorce and i'll never have to worry about my womb aching again. take your eggs. carry them in your mouth. ferment your bones. just leave me alone. THE MALE: you're selfish. THE ANGLER: you're ugly. THE MALE: i'll make you dress in white. THE ANGLER: if you mean, you'll make me crack eggs and drop the gelatinous whites over my head in a desperate attempt to drown, then yes. you will make me dress in white. but i'll eat the crust once it dries. THE MALE: but if the crust is always saturated, how can the egg whites dry into a scab? THE ANGLER: give me my separation. crack the egg and leave me alone. THE MALE: i refuse. THE ANGLER: then i'll bite your tail off until you're a singular tooth. THE MALE: what do i care? i'm already melting into your spleen.]]]
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Day 1
later, much later,
with rotten spikes overhanging her teeth, the ANGLER weeps her watery prayers. that darkness swallows her gut until her stomach trembles with the priest fish birth. the skin! the skin! her constant wallowing skin bursts with magma-like light flares. [you, ANGLER, with your rotten spikes overhanging your teeth, weep your prayers, the half-dead male gonad murmurs, rubbing his gelatinous eyes against sandy earth.] far above, a hungry dragonfish, counting rosary beads, regards the dark with a stare. it leans over rotten spiked teeth and fills the ANGLER’s sobbing gills with prayers. and the dark, hurting her teeth, ruins her stomach with a blistered priest fish birth.
Day 2
the ANGLER wonders
why she was not more of a virgin when the male first collapsed into her side. where was that profuse blood bleed that poured from her eyes and gills, torturing scales until golden metal seeped from her skin and soldered her body into a cast iron idol to the fish gods? [there was redness on your tongue, the male reminds her, rooting around in her liver.] but she had just eaten meat and the muscle was still fresh on her teeth. [your eyes were red, the male whispers and teethes on intestinal threads.] but she had been rabid for days and weeks, the virus erupting in her pupils before spreading fine silver sheets around her face. then she broke red coral in her jaws until scarlet sand stained her jowls. [your stomach was red, the male says.] but that redness was not real. it was a net of algae shadows lifting out of the abyss to color her abdominal meat just enough for holes entrance holes to form. [but your spine was red, the male says.] and her spine was red. the vertebrae flared into vermillion blossoms that rose out of her bowels and pulled glass into spikes. [yes, there was red but i never cried, the ANGLER says.] [do you have to cry, the male asks.] she cannot answer that, just as she cannot answer the priest fish when they pray or the eggs when they hatch or the seaweed when the plants fester in her gullet, singeing the muscle to the charcoal ember point. and she thinks, if she could prick her side with a bony spine, maybe that pin droplet of blood might count.
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