So Listen VERY CAREFULLY

Green 92

Green 93

Green 94

Yellow 18

Golden 1

Golden 2

Dead 4

Green 95

Green 96

The small trees strain. Light and substance. Beauty doesn’t occur in text or nature.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 16.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 17.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 18.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 19.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 20.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 20.

No 21. Shit. Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 21.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 22.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 23.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 24.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 25.

Heat, cheek, iron steam kettle. Cheek is against future. Swell of dirt dervishes up as swallows swarm above the off ramp to Exit 47, freeway bound, knotted, thick. This vulgar dark of guttural fucking blossoms into the foolhardy roundtable pageantry of: oh, love you. no, love you.

Concepts shelter inside retina stilling a procession of children’s paper boats just about to stake formation atop the porous barrier of watery recognition. Inside porch door stands Grandma. Grandma has no skin, but was powdered or was powder. From inside Grandma Talc marches out, atomic, white. The goldening backlight devours her. Father, dead, yet still at the table, devours her. On each fleck of Talc is calligraphed a facet of this Night.

She sees as Grandma sees and Grandma sees as she notions flies must see. Outside the porch door, each particle contains, screens, verily screams: rope swing, sea wall, tree. High tide laps stone slab steps, scratching of crabs scuttling in the aerated wood bin, dead minnows in primary green plastic bucket, sheet of wet white bread to stop the swell of blood from just under cheek, water wings,

oh, love you. no, love you.

Gaslight stove, porch, moon, man.

She can’t make facial structure, identity. Her words for this are all quite well broken from overuse. Misshapen from adolescent skirmishes fought attempting to string these heavy ornaments on the limbs of child, body, lovely, fuse damage, fuselage.

Grandma has no skin, but powdered, was powder. Inside her Talc, dust, atomic, white. The cottage door knocks about the frame. Tables for eating TV dinners stand alert, arachnid in the gold light of interiority.

Light

Light left closer

Light right left closer

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 26.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 27.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 28.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 29.

He is on the wind.

At center of her, there is a ripping about, some kind of wonderful hunger. Her abdomen the scrawning broke mouth, a hunger. Hunger, hunger, hippo. Hunger, hunger, hippo. Hunger, hunger, hippo.

oh, love you. no, love you

A rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, bloody, mucus covered and destined to tear its father from the heavens. Her needle clutched ready to stitch her weight into the celestial thigh. In the center where the darkness blossoms, loses petals, and waits on the deck of the Night, space is defined by retina alone. Warm hands, inner thighs, swallowing coal. Powder Grandma, yellow squash and the wreckage of bones. Teeth on plates. She is made to swallow the coal with supper. Then inside her a torch, a fire, a match. He didn’t know it was there.

These things are the named things: small dark suburban street pavers.

He didn’t know it was there on that time when they bowed in secret at the back of the bushes and broke behind hedges, polluting the stand against vagrancy taken by the moral hands that had planted such vigilant bushes. They on the ground, knotted, birds of legend, the macramé of Grandma, spider plants.

Their heat thin limbs twist around and scuttle out the darkness, white and green falling past sin in sharp, tangled knots, longing out of the planter, always dividing, balling up against each other at the ends, and then going elsewhere. Moving like spider plants against her, the words wash back. Tongue feels inside mouth. Her skull is the split planter. Or did her skull, the aggressor, split the planter? She remembers words: press, iron, lips. She knows lips. The spiders in her belly are set aflame by his presence. They claw upon each other and out, a tidal flow from her mouth into this dirt. They start forth into the great green, yellow, dead, forestscape of Grendle Bud Run. Only to be mowed down by Tandys, Michealsons, and Seavers, Johnsons, and Irish Setters, mowed down by the condo crowd tripping across the field on the way to the Box-n-Go Store.

Their union reduced to swift light.

Left right light closer

Left right light closer

Light light light light light light light light light light

What soft, “Jesus H. Christ, shut it. Shut the pie hole, lady, please. Jeez—”

Blue Pie. He is blue and round as pie. Blue Pie. Her spine serpentines and stops on the concave slope. Pain pipes the music of a deep Cathedraulic organ throughout her matter. The note lingers between her things. She has her hand on her things. Her mouth full of dirt. Back bridges and splays down, bridges and slaps down. Shapes come back to concepts, concepts. Matter comes back. Before her eyes a mercilessly bright black pair of shoes. And the counter harmony of roaches.

“Evening, Mam.”

Green 97

Yellow 19

Golden 3

Golden 4

Dead 5

“Evening, Mam.” Silence, then, “Gary, call it.”

“Evelyn.” Out comes from her.

Blue Pie leans down. “Huh?”

“Evelyn. Closer now.”

So warm his cheek.

Blue Pie bends deeper.

So pink his cheek.

“Come a little closer now.”

Blue Pie melts down.

So wet and wide his eyes. So wet and wide his eyes.

Blue Pie quivers.

So moist his cheek. His baby fat shudders, reacts against itself. His lips hang open.

Blue Pie puts a hand above her forehead, but does not touch.

Blue Pie puts a hand above her center, but cannot touch.

Blue Pie lets his knees hit the earth’s surface, hard.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 30.

Schwip flash, white white, brown warm blue 31.

Blue Pie has cradle breath. Blue Pie smells as cradles, nursing, bottle liners.

Blue Pie to her ear, “Holy fuck, mam, I, holy fuck...”

To Blue Pie, “Listen very carefully.”

Blue Pie to something he has never seen before, “Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy holy holy fuck fuck fuck holy fu–” through this stunted and primary prayer for blindness, “—ck holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy,” his round blue face floods up with salt tears and they fall down and down. His gaze she follows to matted clots of thick maroon, the twisted bed cover of a melancholy feudal Baroness’s miscarriage bed. Between her thighs thick, red mucus.

“fuck holy fuck holy fuck holy...”

It is the Law that that kneels sobbing between her legs. It is not a sweet blue-faced boy. It is the Law.

“fuck holy fuck holy holy holy holy...”

She is not on the yard of Grandma’s summer cottage, spent behind the bushes. This is the median strip on a deserted stretch of some interstate.

“fuck holy fuck holy holy holy holy hol huh huh huh huh huh huh...”

She reaches past the Law, pulls his ear to her lips, “It isn’t a dream. The only sound that you will hear is when I whisper in your ear. I love you.”

“huh huh huh...”

Night was here.

Contact

FLORA think a spell.

the hand brake, the limited occupancy
the open jungle of sky, the distance
the throttle, the thrust of The Commander’s hand, balled tight, spooned up inside the pocket of the night.

FLORA have known you. FLORA unorphans. When FLORA a child FLORA walk into a window of red stained glass. FLO—Stop. Eyes. FLOR—Hands. Stop. Silence. FLORA. Stop. Nigh—Oh fuc—FLORA am careening in from absence. Stop.

The shut down, the wheels, the distance, the red clay, the black light, the hummingness. This swellingness of insects as organs exceed exoskeleton, the acrid bite of suburban mulch, the verdant root, the worms, the thunderous disaster of lightning, the ripeness of laughter from the side of the house, big wheels, dreamsicles, the imprints of grass on sweaty skin, the sweet flesh of his inner arm, the smell of mowing and the hum of crickets, blistered lips. Spent bodies on blankets gaze up at stars vibrating in tune to the cicadas and their casings (unsuspecting), and the lazy clink of perspiring beer bottles, the flesh cooking, the force, the shaft, The Commander, the hand brake, the auto pilot, the ears upon ears of corn wrapped in foil. All of this are details in the verdant cave drawings of a summer night, an unswerving phoenix in FLORA retina. Peaches lose their center all over the heady southeastern coast.

FLORA stroke snakes to slumber, palming their subterranean daydreams. FLORA drink the venom as one base would wine. FLORA make bullets to fall straight down instead of out. FLORA touch trees to grow.

FLORA am light thing perched upon the choking part of human linguistics.

Night here was.

And FLORA caw at air or FLORA am drown. FLORA desert sky and horizon indiscernible; no difference between matter and FLORA spine arching out across air, striking a holy raging and blue blow against distance, as bruises on flesh. Flesh, which here am stars.

Hands of the people who worship are hands FLORA never have seen likes of. Holy child FLORA next, now and always, from then was, and is, are able. Able to touch every and each and all things. FLOR—Stop. FLORA who knew too much about solitude at a young age; sky is not company. FLORA eyes uncase. Rusted vessels in black shadow. FLORA visions the conventionally named lovers (Isabella and Tristan) seamless and sewn, nestled in the crook of The Great Hand.

FLORA under the porch. FLORA witness fruit rain from between the thighs of the woman who is Night. The men of town, men, would throw stones and empty bottles. This here was where they drank, of a day, after sunlight.

FLORA bite FLORA tongue and let blood fall from FLORA mouth, letting her vassals run red into your dirt, seeping out under the altar shaped mounds of earth, hand crafted for petunias, mums – a seasonal shift. FLORA bleed out an intricate map of the original tall cities of God.

FLORA (to the stupid celled child): We know of
you; print of your hands, we made, quiet just wait…

FLORA light hand upon the female is as Sorrow would have it done.

FLORA illuminate. This child cannot walk; FLORA see that it never will. FLORA see the stubborn mounds of flesh severed from their function at the spine. FLORA see the sweet nerve center and all the sweeping, dipping, and bending, arching and vacuuming, the running and stumbling, the knock knees and swelled ankles, awkward dances and not quite yet, but almost, predatory caresses of suburban boys. Those boys who sleep with manhood nestled under their goose pillows. Those boys in processional, their lips asunder with breathless dreams strung up on that sailor’s bravado and this petty gentleman’s insecurity. Their pillowed dreams slither through the rapid canals of their still innocent ears. FLORA feel wild clawing and toothy cries of resplendence, unhad soft evenings of milk breath and entanglement. These things the child will never wholly feel.

FLORA say:
know me
wait, please
this embrace
will come
your homecoming
I carved, wait.

FLORA cannot giveth, but she can taketh away. FLORA shut down the immobile child’s eyes. FLORA swing it clear of division, it screeches, stops, hangs and vibrates, until it falls still. It leaves the woman’s belly in a quick dart of brightness.

FLORA sees that this wife is dull and touches his cheek at night with hands warm from wrapping at her own thighs. These hands smell of washing and fish. FLORA speak only from FLORA own throat in the halting echo of the Lord’s unintelligible scream. FLORA cannot shore the bleeding out from this vacant lobby of womb and wanting.

FLORA delicate unlace this infancy from the matter that = mother. And Sorrow leans down from the side of her great poster bed, smiles, and whispers in FLORA ear, as if she is speaking to a whore starring in novellas about the western lands.

“I have crawled and curled over mountains that caked the cracks in my toes with their flesh. I have pushed my way into every temple of snow and sun. I have lifted every corner of this very earth. I have sought for you in quick noises and slow sounds in the night. Found only antique snapshots elegantly cluttered with street lamps, fog rising, tunnels of trees. I will get there to you with certainty ignoring all the rest. You can count on it.”

FLORA am channeling pricks of light, puncturing wasp sting darkness, swarming the sun, swelling into – over – beneath – beyond – around. Night here was light.

FLORA am blind.

Night was here.