Moon Cola - Issue 4 - Secrets from the Riverbanks

Cole “Don’t Blink”

Self-Portrait as a Sleep Paralysis Demon

after The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781

a demon in your bedroom lacquered with poison and always on fire you only ever loved me from the waist down my skull full of concrete my mouth full of hornets

dissolve my honey hair to black you float feverish in a Georgia summer’s unhinged jaw, a lidless beast like an anvil on your sternum. in the blue dawn you claw along crumbling sidewalks scraping my gypsum death mask into the scattered window glass and luminous dew of a new neighborhood

a jump-scare omen snake in the sand skeleton strewn like lace garters on hardwood I am always lurking in some slit of clay, shattered brick, effaced in your darkest dreams a faceless tarantula, a spinner, a recluse, a widow some lonely woman winding up to kill you slowly

Llorona

I woke up at the river Arms and body bare I can smell them, my children The tamarind tang of their skin Clinging to cilia-lined caverns Leading to my center

Visions on dark screens

Behind my eyelids, living dreams Of hands pulling us all under I know What he will say, what you will believe That I could take portions of myself And suffocate them soundless Under mirrored surface But his hands always hit harder Than mine, his venom more vicious And I’m just another cautionary Tale—a reason not to trust women Who know all too well I’m waiting at the river

Searching

Sinking

And though you can divine The salt of sorrow on my face You only think you know my name

In the dark

Along the edge of slimy basalt and paper-cut reeds is a village of snail shell houses. If you kneel into the mud-squish, you’ll notice port-hole windows and gaping doorways.

Most of the time you wouldn’t unless you are an amorous twenty-something prone to bouts of skinny-dipping and when you turn back to shore, you notice your pile of clothes is missing save for a tortoiseshell button, a brass buckle and a kick of short, cotton threads, drifting into a heap.

we aren’t special for feeling this way

but i want to call you up and tell you about tuesday’s strangeness and the blunt tactless way of the man who found your body i would tell you that today i forgot you were dead because i lost myself while making deviled eggs and that the old bitch called us up one after the other hoping she can sue us for your life insurance before you’ve even been burned or buried

these things would make you laugh hearty and heavy and wheezing you’d ask if it’s ok if you put me on speakerphone (with no one else there to listen in) and apologize -- you just lit a cigarette you’d slur: enough about me say you won’t keep me long ask what i’m reading and how’s he doing and do we need anything

i would tell you that the week before you died at the laundromat, my eye caught like a fishhook on the wide red stain left on my jeans from the night in september when you cut your foot and bled everywhere just that one glimpse as they went into the wash and a spark of regret. see i washed them accidentally, i like wearing blood carrying part of a person i love woven into denim and kept next to my skin

this too i think you would understand in life you loved the weird ones and knew to ask the strange questions plugged deep into the answers you would interrupt and ask more and at the end you would say: dig

Auder “Strange Departure

PEPSI COLA

I.

Do you remember when we dropped that body in the lake? The water was black and full of weeds and I thought it would sink down easy like a backpack of bones. But it floated. Ice cream on Pepsi.

She wouldn’t stop looking at you with those big glassy eyes. I said we needed to go, to get in the car and just drive, but you said we can’t leave her like this and she looks so cold.

I thought cold is one word for it and I thought I saw her wink.

II.

Do you remember when you dropped my body in the lake? I refused to sink, not for you, not for anyone.

There were leeches on my stomach and I swore I wouldn’t stop floating until they landed on Mars.

Until you swam out to join me in the water.

III.

I remember when I left your body in the lake and it sank like swallowing medicine and I drove and drove and drove toward the city lights and didn’t look back.

Jackalopes (Reprise)

I went to the woods in search of something sharper than solace, some splinter that pushes in the way the word solitude does when what I mean is loneliness.

I longed for the silence, that wild stillness, because I thought I couldn’t stomach it –I thought I’d drown in it. In the dark, the trees were trails of ink blotting out the sky, silhouetted in moon-soft light. The whiskey pressed tender fingers to my lips and burned all the way down.

It must have coaxed them here, their taste for the spirit or the soft lament of my campfire song, how it called, through the dark, I don’t want to be alone. Nothing is more honest than what we cradle in the dark.

I can’t piece out the truth from the unreal, but I know the swell of my song was rounded with their harmonies and all lonely things worldly or other, are beautiful in the dark, made soft by firelight.

Yaga’s House”

Naming Jars Recipe

Method : Finding feelings is tricky. They hide in your muscles, or toes or nose. Silly-Tickles in the head and throat form words like bum..p and pee..p (said slowly). Burst out giggles. Quiet-Gentles after big tears or a hug are peace or love. The feeling of listening keeps you still, to understand new things. Some people can Wriggle-Giggle and still listen. Or Windy-Bumpy called naughty. Or Noisy-Wobbly energy made by Worried-Scared. These ones live in heart and head jars. Giant-Feelings make you almost disappear. Like Fear creeping and hiding. If you give that big feeling many names, lots of little feelings turn up too. You might cry. It feels good to tell a kind person big feelings, even if that person is just you.

All the other feelings chat too, they think you are so brave. Now the feeling is the size it should be. Put It in the jar in your tummy. To splash around in Good-Spirit-Water. Not outside all over every thing. Now you are the boss, pull them out and put them back when you please. Messy ones go in your heart jar and giant ones in the tummy jars. Listen-Understand goes in your head jar. The naming jars keep them from flying around and jumping out, until you want them. Do not put lids on the jars, they can explode that way. It takes a long time to heal from exploded jars. Follow other recipes for that problem. A feeling in the wrong jar can get very messy. Sadness in the Fear jar makes an extra dose of Loneliness.

Or put Silly in the Angry jar? Be VERY careful, that one breaks things. Sometimes you have to empty all the jars out on the floor and untangle them. Or they squash Peace right in the middle, so you cannot hear it. If you do not want a feeling one day, pretend you do not care. Listen to its story, soothe it with new names. While it is chatting quietly put it back in the jar. If it keeps leaping out, keep following these instructions. It will slowly give up and go to sleep. From all the jump ing.

[Found feelings: Dogs breath/spider legs fear or petrified rock, feather frills giggle goggles, wobbly jelly belly laugh, super ball bouncy worry worms, lily light listen ing lasers jiggle, me mine naughty ninny, frangipani peace pillows, puppy kitten love hugs, windy bumpy scaredy cat.]

Sasquatch Soiree

By day, rope swing hangs dead over water; air is silent save treetop twitters. Still, evidence presses like riverbottom pebbles on bare feet. Plastic cups, crumpled potato-chip pouches float idly downstream. Whisky bottles, sandy with sludge, wash up against ankles. But this is not ordinary party paraphernalia. Last night’s bones of fish plucked from streams barehanded, ravaged raw, litter banks. Footprints twice the size of mine make muddy tracks where behemoths danced, cheek to woolly cheek, mammalian voices raised in harmonious howls. Some even galumphed to cliff’s edge, seized braided cord with brutish hands, barbaric bawls, monster splashes as bulky bodies hurtled into filmy dregs of the deep.

RED BEAR

When the blue moon rose above the canyon

And the creatures mustered Red Bear so tall his head’s a snow capped mountain Wonders what they are doing

Blood spattered US history

Getting me down I am lost where I’m bound

Long ago Red Bear would watch his father Speak with the Wolf from the forest

When our sleeping mother’s earth was woken The sacred trust was broken

Fools ladder Generations Falls like rain storm

Remember where you’re standing

Howling Stars

There was something about stargazing that deeply unsettled Rory Allen. When Rory was a child he’d watched a cartoon in which a rabbit was being hunted by a pack of wolves. The rabbit ran into a clearing, and – thinking its pursuers gone – paused for a moment to catch its breath. But as it stood there, chest comically expanding and contracting by the will of the cartoonist’s pen, dozens of wicked eyes manifested in the shadows at the edge of the clearing. This image had burned its way into Rory’s mind, etching with permanent flame a dread of darkness.

And so it was against the pitch-black backdrop of the cosmos that the myriad stars of the Milky Way appeared to Rory not as fantastically beautiful, impossibly distant celestial objects, but as the wicked eyes of innumerable, hungry creatures – lurking in the shadows of the sky. He was the rabbit, and every night he stood in that clearing, waiting for the wolves to find him. There were some nights he could’ve sworn the stars were closer than before, inching ever closer to his sanctuary, to gobble him up into the black.

That was why he had chosen to live in the city. Light pollution was Rory’s best friend, and underneath the disgusting tungsten-hued light ing of modern America’s finest streetlights, the ever persistent glow of a million business’ neon signs, and the towering beacons that were his city’s skyscrapers, Rory was protected from the cosmic wolves. The light of the never sleeping city hid him from his pursuers’ gaze. The light kept him free. And in his freedom he walked through the city.

Rory clutched a bundle of tulips in his hand as he walked – a gift for a woman he fancied. It was New Year’s Eve, and she’d invited him to the festivities. Perhaps it was just as a friend, he had no way of knowing who else she’d invited, but perhaps it was something more. She’d just moved apartments, so Rory figured that - were the former situation true, that he was just one of many friends she’d invited to celebrate a new trip around the Sun – the tulips would make for a nice housewarming gift. And if the invitation were of the latter truth – something morethen the tulips could be too.

It was a rooftop party, which made Rory anxious; but he trusted the pollution of the city to keep the wolves at bay long enough for him to enjoy the night. He hummed a familiar tune as he walked, and before the end of the song he’d arrived at the party.

“Here for Sally’s shindig?” the doorman asked. Rory nodded, and was waved into the building.

“Elevator will take you straight to the top. Have fun!”

The elevator was worn down, as were most in the city, but still maintained a hint of grandeur from another era – a dash of gold and filigree beneath decades of stress, use, and abuse. The elevator rumbled and shuddered as it rose, but soon supplied Rory to his destination.

Delicately arcing string lights crisscrossed the rooftop, casting the mass of jovial partygoers in soft, even light. Serendipitously, the band was playing a cover of the song Rory was humming just moments prior. He took that to be a good sign of things to come.

He caught the eye of the woman he fancied. Sally disengaged herself from a conversation with a bald man Rory thought he’d seen before. She walked over.

“You made it!” she said, the timbre of her voice filled with all the sweetness and comfort of falling asleep in a field of flowers.

“Wouldn’t have missed it,” he replied, very aware of the coarseness in his own voice. He handed her the bundle of tulips.

“Figured if your apartment is anything like mine it could probably use a splash of color.”

She smiled.

The hours passed in quick succession, and soon the hands of Rory’s watch were nearly met. Aged celebrities squawked from a nearby tele vision, heralding the impending arrival of the next calendar year. Rory felt something press into his side. He turned to find Sally, arm wrapped around his, tulips in her hair.

“Any plans for the big moment?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

The aged celebrities began counting.

“Better think fast.”

Ten became five, five became one, and Sally’s lips were on his. The cheering of the party felt miles away. Her lips were soft, and he fell into them.

Then came the pop.

Rory opened his eyes, and found himself awash in darkness. A flurry of questions rose from the gathering. A blackout? What’s going on? Does anybody have signal? Is it the whole block?

But it wasn’t the whole block. It was the whole city. Rory began to sweat. He untangled himself from Sally and stumbled to the edge of the rooftop. She followed.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked.

He tried to calm his breathing. He looked down to the street, but all he could see was a river of darkness.

Wow, look at the stars! he heard someone exclaim. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Cautiously, anxiously, Rory raised his trembling eyes to the heavens.

An ocean of twinkling, evil eyes stared back at him. He blinked, and the eyes moved an inch closer. He blinked again, and two of the eyes fell – tumbling from the shadows overhead to crash upon another rooftop barely more than a block away.

Rory ran to the elevator. Sally called out, but he did not hear her. In a panic he repetitiously poked at the elevator call button as the adrenaline in his veins prevented him from realizing it would never arrive.

He spared a glance over his shoulder. There was Sally, there was the bald man she’d been talking to her earlier, there were the rest of the partygoers, and just beyond them – blinking between pools of shadow, were the fallen eyes.

He ran again. His hands and feet fumbled over the railing of the fire escape, and the metal clanged and shivered as he clambered down each rusted rung. He looked up. Sally and the others were looking over the edge. Some of them were shouting to him, but the substance of the shouts was lost on him. He was focused on the sky. More eyes were falling. More wolves emerging from the shadows to hunt him through the jungle of the blacked-out city.

He descended into the river of darkness, and swam though the current. Once again he stole a glance skyward. Starlight reflected off the glass skin of the high rises. Billowing blackness crawled down the towering bodies of his once-protectors, gaining shape and mass as it descended. The void twisted and morphed as it reached the street, as if the hands of a malevolent creator were molding the clay of its creation in real time, formalizing the shape of the thing that had been hunting Rory his whole life. More shapes descended, and the shadows around him tensed with the anticipation of the impending attack. Rory tried to remember how the cartoon had ended. How had the rabbit escaped?

Dozens of starlight eyes gazed unblinkingly into his own, and the voids within void began to howl. The sound shivered into his skin and rattled his bones. He covered his ears and kneeled into the asphalt. The rattling howl pitched to a more refined tonality, digging its way into the base of his skull. The sound threatened to split his mind in two. Har monious wails echoed through the empty streets, crushing Rory beneath the weight of the sound; but then, the howling stopped.

In the ensuing silence, Rory heard the chattering of teeth behind him. Something breathed on his neck. He looked up. The sky was pure black. There were no more stars left to fall.

The Monster Goes to Therapy after Capturing the Princess

I was born to bite. To lumber, drool, and devour the new beauty blossoming in private green places, I know.

But when I’m dragging the princess by her hair, soft gold silk spilling through my knuckles, I think

no one wants to play with mine— too wild and matted for palms to pet, for fingers to find trails, for lips to part, press, and breathe the sweat-scent of beast.

There’s a freedom afforded to the Monster. No surprise ending, no burden of love…

Just a soft promise of death followed by a symphony of applause.

From