the plague letters | Kristy Bowen

the

plague letters Kristy Bowen

the plague letters Kristy Bowen

the plague letters dancing girl press & studio, 2022 ____of 50

Dear Investor-In a year, you won't recognize the body. The body that shuffles through drugstores and thrift shops. The body that muffles its cries beneath the coverlet. The body that wanted, then resisted. Who insisted it was a body at all. A thing clodding through the world in chunky shoes. Bed hopping and prodding the edges of the day with its tongue. In a year, the moths eat their way their way through the body's clothes, every sweater dusted with wings and glitter. Tiny exoskeletons clinging to cardigans unmoved for years. The year the body ceased its wantings but grew fat on sweet creme butter. On vices other than desire. The niceties of lace collars and coquettish lingerie. How the body in the mirror looks like a body, but is darker around the eyes now. Like you took a charcoal sketch of a body, then blurred it at the edges.

Dear Petty Thief-The body wants sleep. It comes and goes. Drops off the edge of the bed and becomes rows and rows of clouds on the horizon. Like a princess, the poison already thick in the blood. Already mud clogging the pipes that rust and repair like clockwork. I blink and twenty years down a hole. Down the hatch. Watching the sheep line up and jump over the fence. When you stole my wrist bone, the babies huddled in the storm drain. All that rain for days. Never mind their mothers, already dead from lead poison in every pre-war apartment I ever rented. One where the paint chipped and curled from the walls each night. And you, so stealthy, fingering locks and dipping into coat pockets. You'd watch from the closet as we'd gather up the children, then lick the walls softly before bed.

Dear Senator-Election season, and there are too many hands on this body. Sneaky fingers in my soup. In September , the body moves according to the moon, but where to put the body, just for now, when I'm done with it. When I've hatched the insides out like an egg. Scooped the bits and hollows and swept the floors. The body that wants more bodies, multiplying. And someone inside it. Not a ghost or a girl or a grade school crush. But a man and his body, the other body, that makes more bodies. And how is there room for books inside the body unless we take out the struts, the lacquered rooms and dusty carpet. Room in the heart for the body and other bodies. The bodies that keep leaving through doors that spring open without warning. How to tend with the body that peels like floral wallpaper. The body that loves this crazy, but at the same time, wants to watch it burn.

Dear Middle Management-Once, the body was smooth like a coin. Spit-shined, a pretty penny. Split eagle on the jungle gym. Once, the body repaired itself, torn and fused layers of dermis. The bruise faded in a day from the man on the escalator at the mall.

His body so angry we could not quiet it. This body that would diet itself smaller and larger, Move through a cosmetics aisle to mask the body from its enemy. Coins over the eyes each night to keep the dark away. The body would park behind the elementary school and let the cashier put his fingers inside, one by one, until it saw stars.

Such currency in the body. But such dead weight. The body that given no food, would start to eat its own tissue to survive.

Dear Spelling Bee Champ-Dear body, you are mistaken. Too many vowels in your throat. The coat you burned became a cat, roaming the corridors and crying all night. Body, you were trying your best, all those words spinning like leaves and you, absolutely still, in the center. Bent sideways, but still standing. Squandering your days on dollar lunches and laundromat vending machines. Knew the words, even if the words wouldn't come. Knew the music, shaky through empty tin cans strung with twine. The body sung hymns in the choir room. Soon, it was all singing. Electric in your fingers wherever they touched--light switches, door jambs, the back of your neck. The First Place button they pinned to your chest made you bleed a little into your sweater. But, really, body, it was better. To spell it out with your fingers in the dark.

Dear Model Citizen-The body went looking for other bodies in restaurants and all-night taverns but found no one. Nothing and no bodies.

No trace in the fretwork of power lines shredding the night sky. Almost predatory in the way all the doors were unlocked but no one was home. In movies, they call it the terrible place--the boarded-up windows, the tattered rug. A basement filled with bodies. Except the bodies weren't bodies but busted mannequins missing parts. How I looked for you in the dark of linen closets and garages, but the body couldn't breath. Kept choking on talcum powder and WD-40 until it fainted in the driveway. Cars passed, but no one got out to check on the body, which lay there for days in the sun.

Dear Actuary-The body is constantly in danger. Bus accidents, high rise fires. Lives wires dangling in the alley. What the body thought was safety was food poisoning. Was year after year of violet breath mints to hide the arsenic. We pitch a tent in the yard to excavate the body. Scrape off the fingernails. Rub it soft with sugar. Roll the body in glitter.

Detritus litters the lawn--eyelash curlers, shampoo bottles, and still the body smells like death if you lean too close.

Rots slowly under cashmere. Our fear of the body is that the body is already a lost cause, its internal clock winding down. How to handle the body that's already past its sell by date and softening on the shelf. The film that settles over the body that glistens like Christmas.

Dear Insurance Adjustor-Every day I take inventory. Injury, fever, wasp nest in my hair. I pull the lever on the machine and let it spin. Wind through turnstiles and revolving doors and the body can go days without touching a thing. Can hover indeterminately above the sidewalk and still be a friendly body---a body open for business. And it was all about business, wasn't it?

The body gets cold so it puts on a sweater. The body takes it medicine. The body can mask its crazy indefinitely if given the right amount of sun. I push the correct sequence of buttons on the body in the correct order and commerce happens. The machine whirs and begins to churn. I push the correct buttons and dollars spit from my mouth like confetti.

Dear Bartender-Sometimes, the body was so thirsty. The first man the body loved left a man-shaped hole in the sternum. A holeshaped lake in the center of the chest. We'd practice sending paper boats out onto the water, but every ship would sink. You would think the body would get better at tricks with time, but the bottom was littered with all the sailors who'd line up, one by one, to jump in. The body would move closer to their bodies at the bar, at parties, warm with whisky, but couldn't love them. Not with the body and its odd fluctuations. Could only warn them with its crying. The body kept trying to save them, but they'd slip soundless from its arms and into the sea.

Dear Russian Troll-Lately facebook is full of widowers. Dead wives litter the comments section. You, sir, with two first names and a medical degree always have a dog. A god complex. A hottie with a silver streak in your hair. You’re silent for weeks at a time, so much I forget you exist. Subsisting on the bits that tumble into the sofa cushion. You stare untouched from the photo of you plucking the framed medical award from the hands of a diplomat. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect you loved her well, your dead wife and her adorable golden retriever. The kids who never call. The house in the northwest where the walls seep tech money and the blood of communists. You at the end of a long table. Fat on all that conflict.

Dear Aesthetician-The body can't get its skin to shine. Once a week, the body soaks itself in milk. Brushes clean with a heavy brush and still the body wants. Flaunts itself in floral skirts and low cut blouses, but it's still dying underneath all that.

Still paddling backwards in a lake. Faking orgasms and breaking into drugstores at night. Once the body covered itself in greek yogurt and waited for god. Slathered honey in every orifice. Stayed inside for weeks, drunk on plums and jack daniels. Could not stop touching itself or others.

Mothering strange cats and fake eyelashes. Once had a fever so warm, every hair wound up in the drain. Burned every electronic in the house white hot.

Dear Life Coach-During the apocalypse, the body obsesses over food. Tries on dresses. Confesses nothing, but consumes everything.

The body feels supple and round, but is hollow inside like a dried out orange. Could be smashed open at any given moment. One morning the body refuses to get out of bed. Weds itself to low frequencies. The body that craves bread and sugar water. Falters over words on the page like children. Obsessively collects chocolate bars in the butter drawer of the fridge. The flutter in the gut that is not quite hunger. The body's shut and cover. How to account for the body's clutter. When the body, at any given moment, could break into a hundred pieces.

Dear Preacher-If the body is god and the saints all gone from it, how to move the god body when it has grown so heavy. So much gravity in the god body it keeps falling to the ground. We caught all the frogs and slipped them soundlessly into our throats, but now we're just all croak and bluster. All plagues and vagueness. When you touched us with a finger on the forehead, we fell dead from pleasure. The measure of a god body is how long until the body quivers with delight. Every body we had to shed between cities, between towns where the body never grew up but said it did. It was exhausting, how we had to keep chasing down the frogs and popping them back into our mouths every time you opened the door to the church.

Pieces from this project previously appeared in MASKS Literary Zine.

dancing girl press & studio