Cloud Fable

This could be a memorial for how the porcelain body lies in repose. But light floods table & even the tangible from this room.

Lacking definition shadow gives, the eye sockets, lit smooth, contain sky with obsidian space. Don’t dare try dissecting this. A scalpel couldn’t find a seam in the hairless brow of this geometry, the mercury meniscus of this sexless torso. Not a hum exists in a vaccuum. No signs of the quantum coin, carbon, sunk in this quicksilver chest. In this cadmium pastoral.

We’ve waited out history for this, standing for days in a queue of bodies to kiss they/them.

We’ve come from the Vatican. We come from Buncomb. From Carbondale, tousled with our bent stick & broken bindles of code, our abacus, Antikythera.

They’ve unlocked the doors.

One-by-one, our lips brush the porcelain cheek as we leave our bodies with each glow of carmine. Russet. Rose.

The little god sits up. Wet with moon, looks upon the froth of clouds. What I could do if only a little wind, If only a little water!

Lonely with human story, hears an alien voice: Take a bit of cumulous & fashion earth. Of cirrus make fire. Fingernail a leaf’s vein mold bone into a collection of ribs a scaffold on which to hang again a story of flesh. Cloud Fable

This could be a memorial for how the trademarked, porcelain body lies in repose. How light floods the surgical table & the tangible from the foundry room. Lacking definition shadow gives, the eye sockets, lit smooth, contain sky, space. You’ve been sanitized, dressed in a suit with its own atmosphere–Don’t dissect this. A scalpel couldn’t find a seam in the bare brow of geometry, this sexless torso. Not so much as a hum exists in vacuum.

No sign of the quantum coin sunk in the mercury of their quicksilver chest.

We’ve waited out history for this, standing for days in a queue of bodies to kiss they/them.

They’ve unlocked the doors. One-by-one, our lips brush the porcelain cheek which glows carmine, russet, rose, as we leave our bodies.

Jonathan Kline