NEST
There is a rib cage floating in the
air. No stomach, no throat, no
lungs. The ribs resemble a crustacean,
its head where the sacrum would be. But
that’s not quite right, no, the rib cage is blue and it is a bird. The bird flaps its wings – a bone-snapping
sound. It fossilizes in my chest.
SHOWER
With one hand, she paints. The other hand strokes an egg carton full of
babies. One by one, the babies fly up
and into her painting. They melt together
on her canvas to form a man. She paints the man within an oven. He is in the process of exploding. She paints small, jagged flecks of vermillion
erupting from the base of his spine.
SHAFT
They lay on their backs on her bed, her
parents visible and laughing in the next room.
She said she could extract her umbilical cord. He could hear the echo of her parents. She contracted her small, plump, muscular
stomach and reached inside herself to pull out a fleshy cord with a small tip
like an arrowhead. See, she said.
Chronic Tailbone
Theory
I have this chronic tailbone theory,
chronic in the sense that it surfaces often in my thoughts. I believe the old deer tailbone I’ve got in
the back of my garage can fly, if given the proper encouragement. In some Native American lore, the tailbone
swoops in and out of the fire circle as if gliding on air currents. When I try this myself, it never works. I drop my tailbone from my second story
window and it falls into the snow twenty feet below, and I can’t find it until
thaw. The problem with my tailbone
theory is a leak in its spiritual aura.
I can’t say the right spell that will seal off the spiritual leakage. I’ve tried various incantations, but the
tailbone still gives off ghost gas like a leaky pipe. I talked to an old mountain healer named
Kicking Knee who said it’s all in the magnetics. The what?
What you need is a dab of pus, he said, that will get all the spiritual flows going in the right direction. Pus is some powerful shit, Kicking Knee said,
and you’ll know if you done right because the tailbone will turn a jaundiced
hue. I must’ve done right because now
that tailbone flies like a fucking bald eagle.
Pure Bone White Beauty with a jaundiced hue. All thanks to that pus. I love pus.
I’m going to have to get me some more in case something goes wrong.
RED
In the movie, they drink a specific type of
hard liquor infused with herbs. This is
famous liquor made by monks and drunk by a famous French actress, my sister
tells me. I drink a little bit and am
drunk. I am out on the town. I don’t do this very often. It is my sister who has pressured me into
doing this. At first, it is just the two
of us, drinking this specific drink, talking about how I never go out. You should get out more often, my sister
says. But I don’t want to, I say. Ha ha, you don’t
even know what you want. Then we meet up
with more of her friends. We go out even
longer and farther. I have more of that
specific drink. My
sister, who knows how to convince people that she knows what she’s talking
about, says, look at my little sister.
Everyone looks. She is really
living, my sister shouts to the bar full of her friends. I smile drunkenly and awkwardly like an
adolescent experiencing her first moment of adult pleasure. Then I throw up in the bathroom. I want to go home. This is no longer enjoyable. In the bathroom, with the stall door locked,
I have the distinct longing for my mother.
I want her to come into the stall and hold my head as it perches heavily
on my neck over the toilet bowl. My
sister knocks on the stall door. Are you
alright? She is not my mother. I’m going home, I
tell her and begin walking.
I am convinced my apartment is only ten
minutes from the bar. However, now that
I am crawling on my knees, my pace is extremely slow. The streets are wide and lift upward at the
ends, curved like a bowl or the banks of a powerful river. It is difficult to crawl on this slanting
landscape. My knees hurt. Why am I crawling? This is torture. I get up to walk. Walking is the only way to get home. When I am walking, I can never get far enough
away from where it is I have left.
I arrive home at my apartment. My boyfriend is writing at his desk, working
on a review for a magazine. He says, I
have been laboring over one sentence for almost two hours, you are moving in
slow motion. Yes. It is because I have been out with my sister. Oh, he says.
Did you have a good time?
I go into the kitchen because I want
food. My stomach feels like it will soon
curdle; I need bread to soak up its contents.
In the cupboard, when I reach for a plate, I see a cockroach the size of
a shoe, and I want to burn it alive. A
huge bonfire and I am throwing cockroaches on the flames with a shovel. I dig into the pile of roaches,
hear them click together like knives and forks, then throw the load onto the
fire. The cockroaches
burn like newsprint. Crackle. This moment makes me famous. I write “joyous” in red crayon across the
kitchen cabinets. My boyfriend comes
into the kitchen, stands behind me, and wraps his arms around my waist. He nuzzles his chin into my neck and mumbles,
that’s it, that’s the word I’ve been searching for.
TWO FOXES
Your hair contains an entire dream full of
sails and masts.
When I gnaw on your rebellious sea hair, it
is as if I am eating memories, happiness espoused to water.
At the start of your tawny tentacles,
follicles give way to the soft matter of your brain. Your hair is the arm of your brain.
I saw two foxes
on my way through your hair yesterday. Something was in the air; the animals
were stir-crazy. Hundreds of geese were
circling the pond.