who's to stop us
from finding the gold enclosure
my thumb slipped
the latch held
i taught myself
to cry without sound
to open my mouth
& wail
repentant unrelenting
i tried & failed
licked my salt
returned to what i thought
was lost forgot my
predictions traced
across a tongue
i don’t recognize
it's easier to touch tv static
than it is to trade burning
eyes for uncoiling
tears wandering through tunnels
pressing each finger into damp stone
what will come from this unbecoming?
dead skin clinging to eyelashes
hair grows from each opened pore
1. repurposes the title from Alejandra Pizarnik’s line “and night goes dense” in All night I hear the noise of water sobbing, THE GALLOPING HOUR
surely something is missing. nearly a new year before my suitcase emptied. and now where are you, do i want to know? there are truths that take months to unfurl into knowing. i’m still unwrapping whatever will become of mine, twirling around and between my fingers, a means of attention, a mode of stimulation. my skin remains unmarked by you, a blessing? i’ve yet to see.
in the gay bar last night we spoke openly of branding; i blushed when i realized j’s voice had lowered to a polite, private hush. my voice remained the same, unaffected. i’ve become too accustomed to sharing my secrets with an unknown public, or what could pass for one. we traded stories intimate as spit of wartenbergs spiked with current, scars too faded to be seen in neon light spilling from false-vintage mounted lamps; what could have been but wasn’t.
black ice and copper. iron and fire. violet ray, interruptor, electrode. to lay claim to what is/was his; a platter i held to unhungry lips. to be bent in the stable of his barn, marked as property, livestock, permanent; as delicious a fantasy as they come. i wanted to lick the scars teasing the edges of the bartender’s top. i wanted another drink but had to drive. i wanted a clever answer to the question of what brand i wanted, but all i could offer was an initial i share. that way if anything happened, i could say the B was mine.
and something did happen, and i said i should be grateful but i wasn’t, i’m not. and at some point while they were inside me i thought his cock must have been made perfectly to match me because when they folded me in half, the relentless pounding didn’t feel like a blessing or the urge to become one. but i am nothing if not a receptacle for pain and so i let my face show it, something i’ve never done knowingly. i was not pushed to my limits, i still have not found even their edges, only come closer and known deeper that satisfaction cannot be found in a single coupling. i am bruising beautifully but not permanently. i retain only one small scar after two weeks of searching two months ago.
that line of connection now stretched, even severed; i will not know until i ask, and i have no desire to ask. a quiet end would suit me fine, i’ll always have the debt to remember you by. your needles did not enter my flesh. his brand did not burn my hip. their cock does not fill my void in the way i’ve become accustomed to. so it goes, i suppose. by this time tomorrow pink champagne will be chilling and i will be attempting to remain in control. we had an unlucky number of days left to ruin. and ruin came, state after state, night after night, again and again. now i have to fill the number of a broken promise he didn’t know he made, and it is possible my superstition will invite ruin once more, and it is possible i will trade one you for another, as i have done before, and it is possible i will show more of myself than i
should, and it is possible that my careful planning and ritualization of ceremony will culminate in a new way to end.
2. borrows the title from black box recorder’s child psychology
BEE LB is the facsimile of a living poet; a porcelain pierrot with a painted face. they collect champagne bottles, portraits of strange women, and diagnoses. they've been published in PULP, Dirt Child, MOODY, and Landfill, among others.
