from ASHES AND SEEDS
1.
It’s 7:10, she notes. She’s just about to leave her cursed
computer when an another goddamned idea demands it’s time / to
drench the pages.
2.
I will come back…she starts, then pounds the delete key in fury. She hikes out
to meet her edges.
3.
The motion of her eyelashes distracts her as she types, as
does the irresistible urge to call this her autobiography. She considers
this / sentence; she (re)considers
herself. She looks out the window into the nothingness that envelops her. Having
endured so many circular, identical events, how can she tell this story again?
4.
He drives a shiny new white BMW, which he bought but now
can’t afford; he rides around all day, looking to score. He knows his
cleverness is a weapon. pour to melt, he insists.
5.
She floats in a perpetual state of emulsion, strips the last
bit of syntax that makes any sense into pieces that suit her purpose.
6.
Her hand speaks out loud as it slaps her
face repeatedly,
factually and with a plethora of
brutalized dreams.
7.
She picks roses |cut| She picks skulls |cut|
She picks perpetuation. |cut|cut|cut|
9.
She runs through the empty chalk hallways, the white pages, the chapters of absence, looking
for anybody, anybody at all who knows her name.
10.
who is she? they whisper after they have taken (their turns with) her. They don’t imagine she can hear
then. None can match her features in any royal database. Facial recognition
informs them she does not exist. They contact the FBI.
In hushed tones, they whisper, how can we best be rid of
her? And: is she dead because her eyes have gone black.
12.
A memory: He won’t wake up and she wants him to
wake up. She repeats this to herself. you
won’t wake up and I want you to wake up. you won’t wake up and
I want you to wake up, wake up, WAKE UP. Each time she thinks
this, she grows mightier
in her anger. She
pauses, then rises, casting furious shadows onto the mirrorwalls.
13.
He is flecks of liquid placebo. He harbors his many hands inside her.
14.
disentangle! disentangle! she screams as she dashes through the palace
corridors.
15.
witch and lunatic,
they murmur, shaking
their heads.
16.
Meanwhile, the prince is in the
forest, hunting
butterflies. He catches them, scratches their
feathers off. By this he means oh,
look what’s left. And: here
comes the butcher. He does, of
course, need to eat. And he can’t fry
those jeweled fish forever.
17.
His tongue is made of moonlight, of magic, of dreamlies. When she kissed him the first time—nearly
nine years ago now—everything paused as her wish
(let it always be this way, let it always be this beautiful)
morphed to a smashing of prayers, then scattered into
whispers, and the echoes of starless whirlwinds carried them away.
18.
(But his kisses were dust.)
19.
Stillness. A blackbird. All is silent in that bloodforest but
for the sighs of the carbon-trees and the scrape scrape of butterfly wings as
the prince performs their ritual slaughter for his feast.
20.
Road reverse, reverse road: she can’t get away from this palace.
21.
The sky underfoot, the sun in her / skin (again, and always),
skein of fire sweeping through her veins, blossoming in her gut, propelling her
perpetually forward.
*
The foreground flies alongside her, colors blurring together
in a haze of green and brown mingled with streaks of scarlet in the bloodsap
leaking from the deviltrees. As for
any context or sense of direction—she lost that long ago, when the weight of
light broke her
back. Nothing but loneliness to keep her company now.
|cut|
*
begin, she thinks, begging herself to believe. I must begin again.
|cut|
*
But here comes the wall of sepulchral silence slamming into
her. Her 6½ sapphires spill into the abyss.
|cut||cut||cut|
28.
did you exist ever did you—Scarlett reaches for his hand, gone for so long now.
But he has left her a gift of slain sky, shredded narrower than her small
despairing sighs.
29.
They must have collapsed on the moist ground, but the (lack
of) hospital records contradicted the corpus delicti: blood and flesh /
evidence they left on the forest floor.
32.
Her appetite outrages him; he strikes her, pummeling her face
and chest, pounding her with his right fist, raking the nails of his left hand
down her breast.
No one shapes their weapons like he.
33.
Rage taps on the window. The window taps on the door.
34.
She washes
her hands in the bloodriver. Wisps of her climb into the bus that runs back to
the forest branching beyond the palace. She can’t find a single place to pray
amidst this, his vast darkling forest.
38.
don’t be afraid, he says to Scarlett, I can see you in the deathmirror.
39.
what does this mean? she asks him.
40.
Greet the dead the way the dead greet you, she has learned
the hard way. He grabs her by the throat; he hides inside
her /
bones. She forgets what hands are for. a light will come, he
promises her, you will be held up and you will be blessed; you will be
raised above the most glorious of altars.
It is then that she remembers: hands
are for offering him needles.
41.
O sand O silk O galactic black wild—she dances naked, breathless, on the web-spread surfaces of Zodiacal
light.
O exposed bruises, O love doubled into madness,
madness into self
flood of sunlight bouncing off dust particles,
ions in the coronal plasma, forbidden spectral emission lines—
She reads pages
of blank verse; her eyes skim the skies, registering the empty majestic light
of heavenly bodies, most of have already died; their light is an echo, a ghost
chased by time.
She’s drowning
in the cold
moonlight..
43.
don’t move, he said to her, don’t dream,
until I come back from the dead for you.
I will come back from the dead for you.
50.
Nights like these, the edges blur into eternity, into a single red scream that begins with
the heart’s first beat and continues long after the last breath expires,
leaving the body
with only the fact of itself: a
discarded sac of skin filled with rotting meat.
*
he sleeps and she sleeps; they dream the same dream:
(don’t move.)
(don’t dream.)
(don’t even breathe
until I come back from the dead for you.)
But to live in his palace?
(I will come back from the dead
for you.)
Michelle Greenblatt is the poetry editor for Unlikely Stories. A two-time Pushcart-Prize nominee, Greenblatt’s second book, With Explorative Hands, co-authored with Bill Mavreas can be purchased on Amazon.com; her third book, Ghazals, was co-authored with Sheila Murphy. Her book, ASHES AND SEEDS, is forthcoming. She can be reached at michelle@unlikelystories.org
Michelle Greenblatt is the poetry editor for Unlikely Stories. A two-time Pushcart-Prize nominee, Greenblatt’s second book, With Explorative Hands, co-authored with Bill Mavreas can be purchased on Amazon.com; her third book, Ghazals, was co-authored with Sheila Murphy. Her book, ASHES AND SEEDS, is forthcoming. She can be reached at michelle@unlikelystories.org
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