Zarina Zabrisky

RED GREEN BLACK

it moves towards me, fast. red. hot. i know when it hits, it will hurt. burn. i should run away but i can't. i am in a circle with tall fence and no gate.

red calls. my blood calls me, pulls me to it. my chest goes boom boom and so do my legs. i fly towards it. it wiggles, and it is a man--it smells a man, sweat and musk of a man. women smell like milk and grass. mother smelled like milk and grass. soft.

it is now jumping to the side, the insect with red hurt behind. and i plunge, i roar--i hear noise out there where all the human insects gather. they roar, too. their roar booms in my ears. booms faster.

the man jumps, a red cricket. in the field, i saw green crickets, green like grass. green grass smells good. like mother. it feels good on my teeth. it crunches and makes me happy. it is quiet in the field, just bees buzz and the wind blows.

no grass here, no green. just the red moving sideways, towards me, away from me. the man-cricket runs to me and stabs a stick into me. pain red. i roar. humans roar back. the man-cricket jumps away.

then back, stabs again. and again. everything inside me pain red. my blood wet on me, smells salty and raw. smells pain. stab.

dust in my eyes, and tears, and pain. i want to go back to grass, feel flowers on my lips, sweet. the man-cricket does not know how flowers sweet. i do not want to die. i will not die. i will kill the man-cricket.

i run after him, i am now fast, pain makes me fast, faster than him, faster than the wind in the field, faster than swallows diving into grass before rain. i chase the man to the fence. i hit him with my horns, stab him through, the way he stabs me. only man-cricket has no thickness, horns go through. man-cricket flimsy. i stab again. men in the pit roar. they always roar.  

                                                         the man-cricket is hurt. his face white like flowers. he now has my pain. red on him, all over, he drops the red from his hands. i stab again and raise him on my horns, his red mixing with mine. he is light. i run and run, circle after circle, roar after roar and then i see a black shiny stick and hear crack!-- and white light spits hot bee and it flies to my eyes, 

               then all goes black and no more.

 

Zarina Zabrisky

CARVED

 carved
 from an unborn rib
 before dawn
 hours all wrong
 

 i waited
 for the sun

 my mouth
 stuffed with
 the cotton wool
 of sunless dread
 
 my own ribcage--
 a human cage
 for my body
 
 my own ribs--
 the teeth
 gnawing on
 the yearning hole
 
 but for the others--
 i turned into a toy:
 
 button holes
 for eyes,
 black scratches
 for tears,
 lips sewn
 in a coy
 smile.
 
 a velvet
 pussy cat
 voiceless
 clawless
 soulless
 
 at midday
 i tore
 through the fake furs,
 i turned
 into a scary bird
 
 i flew out
 through the window
 glass shards
 for feathers
 
 wings growing
 through my ribs
 at all angles
 barbed wire
 of the freedom
 and terror
 
 and i screamed
 at the empty corners
 
 not from pain
 
 i screamed for you--
 
 a street walker
 a rope walker--  
 said the passer bys
 
 i ripped
 a jagged wound
 for my mouth
 blood lipstick
 all pretty
 
 not a song
 parted my lips
 not a moan
 
 it was a prayer
 to be heard
 
 but
 
 not for pain
 i screamed at the corners,
 oh deaf strangers
 
 when it hurts
 i am silent
 
 a steel blade of the broken knife
 with ice of indifference  
 cuts from my throat to my cunt
 fits tight
 fills the void of the lost rib
 at the core
 
 pain is me
 
 at the corners
 i screamed
 my soul desire
 
 last night
 i felt
 the translucent skin
 of our cells
 merging
 fusing together
 an amalgalm
 of you and me
 spiraling up
 sparkling like
 the whiteness of the bone
 in the hotness of the joint
 the watermelon broken in snow
 shards of milky glass
 splinters of DNA
 diamonds hidden in the depth
 of the sugary watermelon
 chunks of sacred meat
 vein juices bleeding
 from torn sweet flesh
 split
 as i was born back into you

The Non Herein- Michael Mc Aloran Reviewed by Zarina Zabrisky

The Non Herein-- by Michael Mc Aloran is a work of beauty.  From its crisp black-and-white photography design to the elegant spaciousness of the pages to the flow of syllables and ellipses.  I have an uncanny feeling that if I keep still and look and listen carefully--for a while--the lines will roll, rise and fall, breathe under my fingertips.  "Forgotten silences--traces to touch with severed fingertips..."  Mc Aloran's poetic realm is sculpted out of buried murmurs, stone winds, empty echoes, silenced wounds--sounds mistaken for colors, whispers sensed as touches, textures of unknown objects experienced as self.  Silences, shadows and silhouettes linger in the oneiric landscapes of hidden worlds, elusive yet tangible.  Everything is out of joint and horribly beautiful. This is poetry: The language at the borderline of music, shaman's mumbling and dreams.  Thus, there is a primeval, archetypal truth that reaches and transforms the reader--through the skin and into the marrow of the bones bypassing the trivial and habitual.  Beautiful. It is available to purchase directly from here

Zarina Zabrisky

CANCER

her hair is crimson-orange

crisp

fruity

cranberry

citrus

she says, "i'm going to die--"

sighs and goes on, "dye my hair,

since i might lose it

anyway.  chemo."

an airy curtain swirls in the wind.

traces of sundae flavor

hang in the fall air.

chemo sounds

like creamy sweets

in a horror donut shop.

desert is still in the window.

silence.

cancer lives in her gentle insides.

i imagine

it is as beautiful

as she is,

as her bluish powder,

her pale freckles,

her silver rings,

her tattoos.

I look at her pixilated print textile,

a sun spark in the glass button,

an illustrated bible on her desk,

a picture of her son

playing with a toy fire-truck,

an unfinished cup

of steaming peppermint tea,

and see death hovering over her

like a shadow of a butterfly

even her death is beautiful

ONE IS ALWAYS ALONE 

Emptiness the size of the world

Is bigger, blacker than death.
 
Scars instead of the wings.
Wings withered,
Wings wilted.
 
Darker than even death
Is impossibility to love.
One is always alone.

Death is only a transit train:
Hell to hell.
Dying will not be hard,
Hell is always hell.
 
Illusions are the worst.
 
"Never" has a soothing consistency,
Like a missing limb,
Like an internal wound.
Like the rain bleeding outside--
Again and again--
Black blood rivers.
 
Death, love--
The same.
Nothing but loss.
Nothing but lies.
 
Grief is the scariest
When scowling.
My heart used to tremble,
My soul used to soar.
 
Illusions are more cruel than axes.
 
Pain
Never comes alone.
Always in packs.
Like yellow-teethed predators
Inside my screaming veins,
Eyes burning red-green.
 
One is always alone.

Zarina Zabrisky Review

There is no question that Zarina Zabrisky’s new collection of short prose, ‘Iron’, is a remarkable book. Zabrisky works with such an exactitude, a highly- tuned sensual awareness, with powerfully charged metaphor and a keen perceptual intelligence throughout. These are stories of the surreal and of the  absurdly living, breathing flesh, highly-charged and colourful cinematic tales evoking empathy with the central characters. Zabrisky makes no value judgement of the human condition and its experience, things ‘just are’, and survival is necessary, whatever the cost may be. There are no victims here, we are just passing bodies, juxtaposed against or contained within scenes, the essential humanity of the central heroines revealed in the beautiful testimonies with which she lays bare through her snap-shots of the ‘life less lived’. Zabrisky writes in such a manner as to, at once sparsely and then richly, seduce the reader, seemingly effortlessly, then strikes and one is left in the grip of her kaleidoscopic calamities: drug abuse/ hallucinogenic collapse/ desperation/ death/ danger/ yet still there is hope, in spite of... The delivery and timing building unto one of some elusive revelation that only she and the reader knows, albeit separately, the endings leaving our willing submersion open, as if slowly opening unto a fading distance, yet lingering, unfettered by definition. You can purchase it here