Apart
Night splints hold teeth in position, I believe. There is a baseless fear of dismemberment, of awakening without the sum of one’s parts, like the cave of a missing tooth. I lie in bed running, and too fast. Of what do predators dream?
Category: Fear
Dollface
~In my mannequin dream, she walked with a limp and a clack. Lurched toward me with a doppler shift, as sure as a coaster’s chain drive. Her face- a calamine complexion, flytrap lashes, cheekbones of rouge pasties. And I, rooted, felt the come-hither hell of china fingers.~
A house away from home
Was that house one of lies one of alcohol and fear Were there violences muffled by bedroom doors and punishments sealed by closet doors Gone without… gone without Come to me now Lay those ghosts in my hands Let us live for time is so short ~photo by Ben Gingell / Getty images
Comfort
Around here, we don’t hold with sharpened knives. With lit candles or precarious positionings. Life is safe in dullard’s walk. Nothing’s our fault, and we love the spilt milk lament. Image from The Concordia
Mutuals
~Fifty said to Fifty~ Time is growing short, growing cold. Know that i will be with you, all the way to the next time. Be on guard, lest I drift into the lock of sleep. Charge through the night, that you may play in broad day. Put away the fearsome fear, until another year.
A white thing
2:43 a.m. and I get up to pee. There’s only the night light, knee height. I shuffle arthritic, steady the wall, when a white thing bumps my eye like a drifting balloon. In a hissed whisper, “bitch” it says, imploding its albumen, stifling my breath. I don’t have to pee any more.
Spirits
I’m seeing more somethingsin the sighing airDistances to dramas,beatific in their flash,are shortened.Though I once feared the fear,lungs of sponge breathe it in,baptizing its fire,and I am well.I am well.
Blackface
When I woke upthis morningI laid there for a bitIdly went to scratch my nosethen nearly had a fit Someone else’s hand was there,with skin of ebon brownI ran my fingers through my hairIt felt like eiderdown I went to find the looking glassto see what face was thereExpecting not the veritasthat I was meant […]
Doctor Doctor
cigarette burnsunder the sheets the temporary bee stingsof random needlings pinpoint pricks purposely playedbait for a loon’s scratchings mad reveries in broad daydraw attention to comic despair Oh Doctor DoctorCan’t you see me burning burningCan’t you see me burn?
Hero
A scene of old develops and sharpens. It’s the start of some chapter in a boy’s learning. This memory is of being ten. It has cold misty rains at a train station. The buying of a ticket with nickels and quarters and wide eyes. He is going to see El Cid in Montreal by himself, […]
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