the BODY ATTACKS ITSELF
Issue III
the bodY attacks itself issuethree wasmadeby:
britny kutuchief natalie petrosky & jon work
thankyouforreading!
LIFE AS I’VE KNOWN IT Jane Odartey HANDS THROUGH THE STORM Susan Dale PRACTICING CARTOGRAPHY David Ori Skattebo THE MODERNS TWEAK THEIR HYPOTHESES Colin James WANDA’S SONG Joelle Diane Baker I AM TWELVE Stephen de Jesus Frîas SEQUESTERED TO YESTERDAY July Westhale TREMORS; IN ALL ITS BEAUTY Samuel Zane Farrell ELECTRIC IN THE SUN Michael Lee Johnson TREVINO Aldo Morazan EASTER 2016 Matthew Falk MALIBU Roger Bernard Smith (H)OURS Angela Melamud HELPING VERBS Howie Good FLASHLIGHT NEEDED David Riddle III WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS Adrian Ibarra MATRICULATION INTO MATRIARCHY Reese Francis WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF Shawniquica Henry ALL OF A SUDDEN Andrew Edminister THE FENGSHIU RULE FOR YANG RESIDENCE Changming Yuan I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS A GIRL Adrianna Piotrowska Photos and art by Andrew Edminister, Joelle Diane Baker, Jim Fuess, Jon Work and Josh Palmer Cover by Joelle Diane Baker
life as i’ve known it jane odartey
An island afloat gravity of senses kneading desire. The curses of ears seek lyrics in drills of screaming cars, in dancing grasses. Skins cocooned in silk, like stones burning on bristles in the valley of frozen oils. Have tongues dance in others salivas; curl around rotten meat with pure crystals of Sugar. Through my nostrils, poisoned airs stream like hypnotized soldiers unleashed into battle. I won’ t rise with the morrow’s sun.
photo by jane odartey
hands through the storm susan dale
The Cherokee son slipped onto a dusty path to follow the soothing notes of a melancholy flute. The flute’s song took him to a gathering of elderly Asians who were practicing Tai Chi. Moving to the rhythms of the flute, with arms extended, they squatted on bent thighs to slow motions; muscles stretching outwards and back in. The flute singing out directions for the forms reaching out and pulling back. Cutting into the flute’s song, the sudden swirls of steel whirling circles in the air. The Cherokee son looked around to find an Asian swords-man. He saw him squatted on his thighs and swirling a sword in a circle above his head. He recognized this sword twirling, as being a traditional ritual of Asian warriors. On the swashbuckler’s head sat a crown of silver spikes that shot outward from the center of his scalp. Naked to his waist, the warrior also wore flared pants of silver satin that matched his sword and crown. And while the swordsman’s blade was circling under the sun, it was throwing prisms of light into the new day. And as it magnetized to the rays of the sun, the sword was delivering messages of warning. The Cherokee son read the warnings. ‘Rattling his sword to the onlookers to wield the power of fear. But what power the sword against grenades; against bullets? Against fate? Bah.’ Flashes of the sword - silver and steel sparking and swirling beneath the sun. The sword reflecting the sun in the blade to call forth sudden flashes in the sky; zigzag photons of lightening forking above the earth. He blinked in astonishment. ‘No powers against the new days or against fate but the Asian swami and his sword have the power to call forth lightening.’ He knocked his head with his knuckles. ‘I am not dreaming?‘ Bustling and exclamations of shock. A moment later and the Tai Chi Asians were rushing helter-skelter to take cover. Standing shocked-still, the Cherokee son saw the elderly Asians scrambling in all directions. He went on to wonder. ‘But what happened to the sword thrower?’ And looked around to find him, but the swami warrior had seemingly disappeared into what seemed thin air. But the thin air was thickening into legions of dark rain clouds; the clouds moving in a threatening way through the scowling fabric of the skies. Clouds piling up in dimensions; clouds hanging heavy and getting lower and closer to the earth. Clouds dragging their heavy dark skirts through a sky pierced with swords of lightening.
Then he saw, ‘could I have seen really,’ the mouths in the mountains blowing out great guffs of winds. Expelled, the winds picked up in intensity to turn tree leaves to silver undersides and to lay low the grasses. Falling from the skies above to the earth below, the shadows of clouds darkening the land. The lightening zigzagging across the skies in silver streaks. Thunder’s voice booming in crescendos. A volatile light show flashing across the skies. Streaks of lightening popping up here and there; forking into the mountains. Winds sharpening to cut his face like jagged glass. Cracks, booms. Hard drops of water falling, hitting, splashing the earth. The streaks of lightening widened to light up the skies, and the rains washed the skies to a milky canvas. The skies going dark again. In frenzied motions little, sharp lightening patterns danced across the heavens; here, then there. Up and down the skies. Fear up and down his spine. His heart snapping sharp as the lightening. He ducked to hunker behind the base of a wide tree; his face lit by the lightening___ showed flashes of fear. The lightening streaking into the darkness. An onslaught of rain. The rains slanting across the earth in blinding downpours; the skies glowering and gleaming with electricity. ‘I should be inside somewhere. Anyplace, but here in the open. Ah, but the storm came on so fast. Where would I go? I am amongst strangers.‘ And hesitated before he forced himself to admit- ‘The lightening was conjured up by the steel of the sword.‘ He gulped. ’How can I think such a thing? But I saw it when it occurred; no doubt about it; the sword drew the power of the sun to streaks of lightening colliding in the skies.’ Great thundering roars followed. Crashes and blazes of fire crackling. Then, of’ a’ sudden, two fireballs were born.
’From turmoil springs turmoil,’ he thought as he witnessed the fireballs taking form. Round red-hot fireballs; one directly behind the other in a fiery hot journey in the air, approximately six foot from the ground. Around the balls the air sizzled and cracked. The Cherokee son, being both fascinated and fearful, was so astonishingly afraid that he didn‘t feel the rain that was falling in sheets to soak him through his clothes to his bones. His eyes widened in trepidation. ‘Oh no, the fireballs are coming towards me.’ Close to closer came the balls. Palpitating in fires, they bobbed along in the curdled skies; coming in a slow, steady pace. The blue and infrared radiation flashing off of the balls hypnotized the Cherokee son into paralyses. Around him sparked the fireballs’ electricity. In the skies the voices of thunder. ‘Can I run away? Do I have time?’ His heart beating in three-quarter time. Falling to the ground, he lie flat out on his back to try to avoid meeting up with the fireballs. Sparks were shooting off of them as they pulsated along, as nonchalantly as clouds, as sudden as shadows, as dangerous as fate. Through the suddenly-dark landscape they shuttled forward, spinning in hot balls of blue and gold and red. Hotter than fire, more dangerous than weapons, the fireballs in all their deadly beauty___ were almost upon him. Already the intensity of their fire was scorching his arms. Then, from out of the rainy darkness emerged two hands, long fingered, boney; as ethereal as clouds with the rainy background showing through them. The fingers still, then moving quickly as though they were spiders. Motionless, until they felt a victim in their web, then moving quickly to wrap up the victim; that was the way the hands moved. And while the Cherokee son watched with awe-struck eyes, these same hands grabbed hold of the fireballs; one in each hand and hurled them with great force; out and away. And in their speed shooting forth, the fireballs seemed streaks of meteors burning through the rainy skies. Booms and crashes, shattering sounds. Mighty forces, the fire-balls zooming forward to crash into a tree. Crescendos of smashing cracks. Zigzag bursts of electricity blazing up and down the tree. The tree burst into fires: cracks and sizzling, the tree splintered in two before it crashed to the earth. The Cherokee son, who had been trying to find the hands that hurled the fireballs, saw instead all around him and moving as quickly as fate; the rain in sheets, the clouds opening up to more rain. Before his astonished eyes, out flew three tree spirits from the cracks of the fallen tree. He rubbed the rain from his eyes and looked again to see three bearded spirits in soaking-wet shrouds looking confused as they stood with their hands outstretched. They were shaking their heads and scratching their beards. Seldom disturbed by the outside world, the spirits had been sleeping the sleep of eternity when the deadly fireballs set their refuge into leaping flames. All on the spirits were white, from their torn shrouds and shoulder-length hair, to the long beards falling to their chests. Straining to see through the rain, he was able to watch the spirits being lifted by the winds. Upwards through the rains, they were headed towards stormy clouds. Beards and hair, shrouds and transparent bodies merging. The spirits united into a circle of heavy mist that merged with a rain cloud. Then, something else caught the corner of his eye. Flashes blazing to the right of him. He turned his head quickly to the fireballs leaping away from the fiery tree and again they were bobbing towards him in hot blue and gold balls. And again there appeared, as though from out of nowhere, those white-washed hands. They grabbed hold of the fireballs and hurled them so far and so fast that they were sailing through the air in streaks of lightening that didn’t stop until they hit a mountain. Immediately, the mountain was run through with flashes of fire. Thunder booming. Then, as though it was covered in hot lava, the mountain spit masses of fire down its sides. Fires crackling up and down the mountain. The rain poured down on the fires. The fires sizzled, smoldered, and smoked away into ashes. And then, as though the mountain fire was the climax of the storm, the storm began to lose its intensity. ‘The mountain was saved ... but no. I believe that mountains are forever,‘ the Cherokee son decided. The rain slowed from its slanting downpours into straight down drops that drowned the fires of the sword thrower. The rain slowed to trickles; the trickles to heavy mist. The thunder cut its booming crescendos into faint coughs. And the skies were washed clean to emerge pearl-gray. They seemed lit from within by a new born sun, under which the rain-drenched clouds were wringing themselves dry. The Cherokee son raised up from behind the tree to stand in the mist. He listened to rain drops falling from the leaves in a steady blip-blip. He inquired of himself, ‘what power the sword?’ And answered- ‘More than I realized.’
photo by andrew edminister
practicing cartography david ori skattebo
Stuck in my head is this phrase I was told, That the earth is incredibly, unbelievably old. And with every path I’ve walked and field I’ve tread, I see the coming and going of the alive and the dead. Thinking of tress that grew and hills that changed, Transformed by joy and distorted by pain. From laughter unending and problems unsolved, I note how it makes the landscape evolve. Scribbling new details and filling in gaps, I revise and review the area’s map. Remember the valleys and the rivers I’ve crossed, I realize I am and I will be wonderfully lost.
photo by josh palmer
colin james
the moderns tweak their hypotheses
In the early days it was all urination and defecation. Later I sat for a traveling portraiture artist. He was more than informative in his explanations of being drawn to the light. “Good vs. Evil� he said. His effeminate walk began to look increasingly like a moral compromise
wanda’s song joelle baker
Wanda waited at the window For Benny to come around the bend Skipping and singing a tune On a warm afternoon For Wanda to be wed For Benny to lay with her in bed While at that time up in the mountains Mocking bird was mocking all along That bird mocks every man And takes everything with his song And everyone knows about the coyots’ How they cry at the moon When the wind is weightless Well and the air has stung They moan the name of the loved one To the tune of the twisted trees And the cry of the coyotes Wanda fell to her knees And though she begs and though she pleas Benny had gone to the mountains to rest in peace And the mocking bird mocks relentlessly along Taking everything with his song
i am twelve
stephen de jesus frĂas
WITH the summer sun STINGING our skin like cold SORES on the lip of a licentious lady girl WITH whom i hopped skipped and jumped CRACKs in the street like FIENDS spazzing for our next rock, WISHING i could have called it love but FOR the vein-ity of her sashay IT left no room for my husky sized school slacks it was almost TO die, but instead, simply the LAST time i ever shared my snack pack.
sequestered to yesterday july westhale the spokes of your grotto are hewn there like the ace they can be played up to be. the round of pianos molten to the tune of sunsmoon, the meditative furl of a skinny metropolis.
go to your nearest delicatessen and salt my living breath
because this, yesterday, will always be all your fault-the peevishness of an ear to the ground of china beach, the subject of luck
tremors; in all its beauty
samuel zane farrell
Before my diagnosis with MS a tremor’s fountainhead in the right hemisphere of my body began to dance; my right hand incessantly shaking, my coordination and minute motor functioning became irreversibly impaired.
My mother died, and I was numb; I forgot about the shaking. After my diagnosis, the tremor grew tenaciously by increments of inaccuracy, rattle-tat-tat-tat my hand went ‘til nothing got done; it’s stiff luck that led to inactivity. I observe my leg occasionally taken by fits of shaking alsoit does not shake quite as badly, though. Pain seems to gather in rows. Shaking so much no longer preoccupies me (Oh! How it used to!) I think about the plum tree in the garden, instead. The eye of the stove in my mind has cooled. Surely it’s still there, but simply hidden somewhere. The things that I miss are only things I can no longer handle: playing a guitar (several instruments, for this matter...) or, handwriting legibly. I only think about the plum tree in the garden. To aid me, I take a 50mg. tablet daily; I swallow an ineffective bit of chalk, honestly. My doctor is doing all that he possibly can. I only think about the plum tree in the Garden. How its dull bark does shine In all its beauty makes me smile... For a while.
Michael Lee Johnson
Electric in the Sun I’m electric in the spring sun nomad in the summer dust my lantern burns without fuel, I lie in the deep grass with microphones tossed over my earsand feel like I’m on a highpsychedelic blue-green grass pink sunglasses in my left hand, teeth pearly white ivory tusks, muscle tee shirt, with brown sash from shoulder to hip, crazy beads around my neck yellow-orange shaped like candy cornlife is but a blitz, I’m electric in the sun, and there is no cell phone by my side.
Trevino
Aldo Morazán
I met Fuzzy, a few months into the ninth grade. Hitherto, my social life had consisted of a series of passing, scholastic acquaintances. Fuzzy or just about anyone, for that matter, I felt, was no exception. We had been introduced at a party, and hit it off right away. Apparently, we were both in the habit of spending countless hours listening to Rock music, trying to decode the secrets of the guitar gods blaring from our speakers. A few years earlier, I had received a generic acoustic guitar from my father as a birthday gift. By the time Fuzzy and I met, I had gone as far as I could or would with it. Just as I readied to give up on learning how to manipulate songs from it, Fuzzy said he played, and offered to teach me. As I approached his apartment for my first lesson, several stifled power chords bled through the front door to greet me, seeming to swear that, if given the chance, they would tear the entire complex down. I felt like a moth drawn to its electric flame. The sound consumed me like none of my albums ever had. It was hard to believe there was any relation between his guitar and the one I usually heard in church, let alone my acoustic. Inside, nearly every square inch of his room was a typical, American teenager’s testament of his devotion to Rock. It was almost cliché, like something out of Bill & Ted’s. Copies of Hit Parader, Circus, and Guitar World magazines were strewn about the room, while his boombox played a worn Metallica cassette. He was working on learning the “One” solo. It became clear how it was he had come to be revered by our classmates. “‘S’up? he asked, rhetorically. I replied in kind and asked, “Is that your guitar,” as he set his black Fender down in order to shuffle things off his younger brother’s bed so I could sit. “Yeah,” he responded, but his tone asked, No shit, stupid. Whose would it be? I refrained from asking where he had bought it. When I had gone hunting for an electric with my dad, I only found a small, student-sized one with a puny built-in speaker in a Toys r Us display case, safely locked away from Lookie-Loos. “You find the place okay?” “Yeah,” I said, not mentioning that I had only been a passenger, trusting my mom to get us there. I had simply preoccupied myself with meandering through the radio airwaves. Then, upon arriving, I barely expressed my gratitude, hoping not to be seen climbing out of our 1988 Dodge Colt. “Try it out,” he said, pointing to the guitar with his chin. At the time, I was an absolute Rock-n-Roll ignoramus. The scope of my knowledge of guitarists was strictly limited but blooming with some basics, Robbie Krieger, Mike McCready, and Kurt Cobain; but when I strummed my first power chord as instructed, I sensed the same poisonous urge that must have coursed through Hendrix, Clapton, and Page when they started.
After that first meeting, I regularly frequented Maywood’s library, checking for the new Guitar World. Eventually, they stopped stocking it. I figured they were on to my “borrowing” favored pictures and tablatures. I rationalized that they would eventually throw them out anyway. If anyone was committing a crime, it was them not me. Having no MTV to speak of, in the time when the M stood for music and not mediocrity, I relied on Fuzzy and the radio to fill me in. In a few months’ time, Fuzzy and I formed a band of more convenience than talent. Mark, Fuzzy’s neighbor, filled the rhythm-guitar section with a facsimile of Fuzzy’s Fender. Mark’s parents could apparently afford a more comfortable life than anyone I had known. I knew they were really well-off, when Mark informed me that he was receiving private guitar lessons. Art, the drummer, was already of some renowned in the small, Metal music circuit of Maywood and Bell. Fuzzy explained that Art had gotten most of his chops from being in several drum lines, which explained a lot. Looking at Art, one would peg him for more of a chess champ than one of the thunder gods gracing Fuzzy’s walls. I filled the role of vocalist, for no other reason than the fact that Fuzzy and I incessantly talked shop, comparing notes on the metaphors, images, and what-nots found in our favorite songs. Finally, there was Bobby Trevino on bass. It was at Bobby’s that our mission to conquer the music world began. He literally lived on the south side of the tracks; not that the south side was any more forgiving of bands’ ruckus, but his parents had a garage they were willing to let us use. When I walked into his room for the first time, even though we had known each other and had been in the same Homeroom since the sixth grade, I knew Bobby had been fed Rock from birth. I wondered why we had never gotten together before. When I saw his lifesize Jim Morrison poster on his door, I felt the fates had been openly keeping a gold mine from me. If I had hung around with Trevino since the sixth grade, my knowledge of Rock would not be as underfed. His room was no cliché. His home was no cliché. His parents were no cliché. They had bred him to be predisposed to rock, but, like Mark and me, he was also a beginner. As far as equipment went, mine and Trevino’s were the shabbiest. To clarify, I actually had nothing. Fuzzy had somehow obtained a Shure microphone, which I would use until I got my own, and Trevino’s dad loan us a wobbly mic stand—from the old days, I guessed. Needless to say, that first gathering was an exercise at trying to locate a pace at which we could all jam, which meant Fuzzy and Art had to slow way down. I felt like a lesser burden, since Fuzzy did not have to show me his riffs and changes like he did to Mark and Trevino. However, we soon realized there was no available amplification for my vocals, and I was made to scream the vocals Fuzzy and I had written earlier that week; then I just felt stupid. I figured these were the dues we all pay for Rock.
During a break, while Trevino went to get us some drinks, Mark, Fuzzy, and Art poked fun at Trevino’s Bender (that’s Bender not Fender) bass. “What a dumb fuck,” Art said. Maybe it was the way Fuzzy and Mark’s Fenders hung around them like machine guns on foreign soldiers looting a third-world country, or the way the borrowed microphone hung lifelessly on the wobbly mic stand that prompted me to tell Art, “Shut the fuck up.” Accordingly, he asked, “What’d you say?” rising from his throne. Feeling like some generic John Wayne knock-off, I repeated myself, adding that, unlike his drums, I would beat him back. This, in addition to Fuzzy and Mark’s snickering, let him know I had the advantage of higher grounds, and he would not win. A few months passed since I had abandoned them that day at Trevino’s, when he told me they had decided to drop him for another bassist. Inevitably, time passed. Every now and then, I heard they were playing backyard gigs here and there—the Maywood/Bell Metal circuit. Eventually, Fuzzy moved out east to the Inland Empire somewhere, at the beginning of the tenth grade. Mark transferred to another high school, around the same time. I rarely encountered Art, for my remaining time at Bell High, but Trevino and I ran with nearly the same herd, which is to say we shared the same general area during the two meal periods and some of the same classes. His slightly slouched walk was unmistakable, down any hallway, empty or otherwise. I was sometimes the butt of some of his lame pranks, leaving me irritated but knowing he meant well. At our last encounter, graduation, we joked that we were doing so with lowest honors. Then, a month ago, I heard he killed himself somewhere in Oregon. I was unable to express how this “passing acquaintance” left a hole in me, so I started writing.u
Easter 2016
Matthew Falk
Across this crystalline city, this monument to our hatred of time, we exchange emptinesses, bored by unbearable beauty. I met a man who sells second-hand tourniquets to Gideons and gutterpunks. His emblem is the centipede. Another man sleeps on a pallet in a warehouse, dreaming of electric lions drinking from a watering hole that crackles and sparks. His radio, tuned to static, tells him what God wants. A woman stands in doorways, humming and holding out shoeboxes full of bones. Once, she said, she dreamed she had a secret name but couldn’t remember what it was. From his sidewalk pulpit, a toothless prophet cries, “The city is against us!” In their language of glass and corners, these buildings plot our demise. They will win: we will let them. Let it be today. Don’t live in a grotesque-looking house At the bottom of a valley With all doors in straight lines Above all, don’t dream in a legless bed Right under a chandelier However exquisite Or you would be haunted by a devil
Malibu
Roger Bernard Smith
I’m the guy sitting in the Malibu Coffee Shop on 23rd St. between Broadway & 7th. Avenue close enough to Madison Square Park to catch the shadow from the Flatiron Building at 10:30 in the morning once daylight savings time was kicked to the curb I’m the tall guy with shoulder length hair glasses wide-brimmed hat chin scars numb ears sitting for two hours eating eggs rye toast strawberry jelly ordering two cups of coffee at a time one for the woman who left me months ago
H(ours) Angela Melamud
embers trace blue as the streets shoot themselves down four walls surrounding arms surrounding charms will blaze glitter over your head so tight under heat and always long for me like i have already left you see how heavy we're crushing the morning late
Howie Good
1 I wish I were a tree, so my branches would shake, birds scattering in alarm and then returning. Sun pours into the woodpecker’s eyes. 2 One arrow points left, the other, right, toward a mother fleeing with her baby. 3 My wife had an Uncle Bugsy who went to the chair. Many fires are classified as accidents. People kill for the same reasons bridges fail.
Helping Verbs
Flashlight Needed
David Riddle III
Burning banned books The Brownshirts are outside of my closet I press my hand to the door Feeling the heat of a thousand ideas Jesus, Buddha and Vonnegut Blaze bright Surely by now they have found Rushdie And the Fatwa is completed But Holden and I are safe For now My flashlight, in a small yellow circle Shows Holden lighting a cigarette In an attitude of anger and indifference In short, of youth. Saying fuck Whenever it pleases him And I Am envious of his bravado His strength His balls But in the depths of my cloistered closet I try the word To see if it suits me To feel it in my mouth Roll it around my tongue Like some terrifying ice cream It is sweet Powerful Holden laughs at me As if we share a joke between us He pulls on his cigarette The red ruby of light Shows his face in its youth He will always be young With the bruises on his face Here in my comfortable closet Three days in New York A failed night with Sunny Drunkenness, debaucheries, dancing He has given all those to me Under the yellow circle of light While outside that blistering burned door They try to catch him And put him to the torch Turning yellowing pages black But when I put him back On the bookshelf Next to Bradbury I dare anyone to fuck with my friend
William Butler Yeats Adrian Ibarra
somewhere in new york they’re making poems magic again taking those books about seasons in hell and putting them to use so that soon there will be an army of boys and girls with well worn copies or little black notebooks full of choice lines tucked into jacket pockets ready to whisper them soft into the ears of desire and while using those poems to get someone to bed might not be a tragedy it does lack ambition why waste magic on fucking when it can be fucking hostile? In 100 years I want kids using these poems to cut each other in half.
Matriculation into Matriarchy Sherese Francis A wrenching pang I feel Every time our eyes meet The fear of criticism and Further disappointment Is why I try to avoid both Of our gaping stares How could two people So connected by one accord The presence of a first-born And an unwanted stepchild Coexisting in our bodies Feel still so far apart Us two, a destined accident Out of your barren tomb Was born an undead offspring Who like you, finds it hard to feel Cause we are conditioned in This lineage of abandonment You physically, I emotionally And nothing can be done To turn back that fibrous stone So while you try to find rebirth In the arms of Holy Mary I’ll find mine in the Motherland Hoping one day you’ll join me...
When the Rainbow is Enuf
Shawniquica Henry
When the Hennessey boiled in his veins, his fist was a meteor crash. And my face, only flowers. Only flowers, I told ‘em – only flowers.
Crash by Jim Fuess
all of a sudden
andrew edminister
nothing was, nothing could have been the way they said - wide eyed, quick to bed, sprawled on the hardwood at noon. a farewell and 'I'll visit you" from every wandering mouth - lost in the maze of familiar faces. the sorrow. not for me, the astronaut, but for those with cold black tar on the soft skin of their feet, for they could not move. sorrow for the front porches. the contradictory longing for that kaleidoscopic view of the broad green leaves, that tree no child climbs anymore. now it is not that winding suburban landscape that runs through my veins - it is the crescent moon rising over the unimaginably massive peak in the distance, it is the feeling in a tiny biplane over the mountains that I am home now. my veins run with a new kind of blood, thicker and stronger, unlike the red pool on the driveway one august. trimming hedges to appease the neighbors as those metal teeth snarled and jumped at the chance to snatch up my fingers for lunch - it did not hurt. what hurt was being there, lost in the flat and totally tamed land, fighting against this greenery which was only trying to get closer to the sun. it felt like being a clean cut mid june lawn, but still covered in that wet, white snow of january. contained and safe - nothing more. it was nothing like they said, it was everything she said. multiple choice, it was not difficult. with some primal thrash and scream, with a hard fall onto the cold hospital floor and splintered teeth, with wild eyes and rubber tires --- escape.
the fengshui rules for yang residence changming yuan
Don’t live in a grotesque-looking house At the bottom of a valley With all doors in straight lines Above all, don’t dream in a legless bed Right under a chandelier However exquisite Or you would be haunted by a devil
i remember when i was a girl adrianna piotrowska
I remember when I was a girlRoller skates tied to my feet, my feet gliding through Brooklyn. I remember when I was a girl, when a crooked body would place knees parallel to pavement and skin would release blood in the form of a careless mistake. Where I momentarily took a break, where I momentarily left a tear, before rising and rolling down the block again. I look at those memories as I sift through the folder that I’ve labeled: “Young, weak, and wreckless.” Those unconscious memories of myself manipulating a body, asleep to the knowledge, that I carried not only organs but, that I carried God within me. I was young, I didn’t know better. I remember when I was a girl and I think I’ve left that part of me when I buried the bird I found lying on the side of the street. Half an embryo, half way to maturity, Like me. I buried him and even made a cross for him, out of two twigs and string.