O, IT'S O, It’s Manifold I. They embalmed all the women in one Museum. Critics write, What a surfeit Of hidden beauty! Competence pulses Through limbs, loins. Exhibit 3b reveals Quality that derives only from repeated Effort. Thin red strokes juxtaposed with More elliptical hues of purple, blue— Expertly placed to jolt you. II. Our skeletons were entombed By fats and flesh and anything Brainless. Heaps and heaps of Adipose tissues made metallic
My God, it’s Skeletal Poolside with his mother I reminisce His pelvic anchor. My buoyant ribs. Brains a-whir to keep the meat fresh, Our bodies twirl helically, tendrilled. Somewhere inside are golden bones— Hopelessly stiff as voraciously honed. Blueprinted. Before long we’ll sicken Of fleshy gymnastic and resort to the Skeleton. Exhaust every monomer of Collagen, neutralize every eighth ion Of calcium carbonate, sabotage its Restriction to the frame. Taste our Marrows, nutty, swish it all into our Salivas, sit by the pool a while.
By one too many sick children Masquerading with chalice in Hand. Brimmed by reception Of touch, language. Swallow.
III. A displacement. Cotton, perhaps. By the centimeter, two milliseconds elapsed. Fellatio has too many syllables. One.
Pterodactyl Girl 90 miles per hour romanticize our Windows, blissful, whisking fistful By fistful the palette once painted: Trees and shrubs, pedestrian hugs, Child shoelaces undone. Time yet To begin satanic blasphemy upon The back—shortest distance twixt Two points: tail bone and tippy top Vertebrae. 20 years added, 30 some Subtracted. Two metal bars collapsing Pterodactyl wings. Her brain sings, Makes Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Worth something.
11 LITERARY
BY Natalie Zummer ILLUSTRATION Alana Baer DESIGN Ella Rosenblatt
24 APR 2020
