schweinefleisch

 When Jimothy was a fat kid, he didn’t get made fun of at school. This might have been because he was funny or because he was ale to beat someone down with his heft. In reality, he probably only looked like he was able to beat someone down with his heft. The day he went to the doctor and they told him that he was over 100lbs, he felt weird shame about it. He didn’t cry or anything, but he felt guilty for a good day or so. After that, he went back to Salisbury steak during lunch, including potatoes and gravy.[i] He increased in size as the years went by, bench marks of various kinds passing as he aged. He graduated from elementary school as a double chin was starting to develop, reveled in mathematics as he grew into a size 40 jean, and had some trouble fitting into the chair/ desks in college. He fluctuated a bit after that, but remained mostly the same size as he was when about 23. His size and physical description had very little to do with his life otherwise.

Sometimes Jimothy did not feel very sexy, though. When he masturbated, he would close his eyes very tightly and massage his buttocks so that he could get a sense of what life might be like when touching another cohabitant of the material plane. He did his best to keep a tidy workspace, so to speak, tissues at the ready, nary a wad or loose thread to be found strewn about. Other than these moments, his acquaintance with his body was nil. In the shower, he spent hurried moments rinsing and lathering and rinsing again for purely perfunctory reasons. There was no pleasure in the act of bathing as there might have been in, for example, a Dove commercial wherein the model lavishes herself with a plastic loofa sponge. Jimothy tried not to think about this when he masturbated.

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[i] To be fair to the lunch ladies, it’s important to note that it can be tough to try pleasing the palates and appetites of a school’s worth of idiot children seeking food and know-how.

Letter to my Mortician

If I had the ability, I would apologize for the smear I have left on your steel table. But, since I do not have the ability to give voice to my inclinations at this time, I will lay patient while you perform the task that you have taken on, in service of this body, which I used to inhabit.

Every dead cell you manipulate into position is grateful and yielding. They thank you. I thank you, inasmuch that I am able. My mouth is wired to a gentle smile, restful.

Tubes drain me of blood and various waters. Tubes fill me to brimming with the substances that will preserve this flesh. A kind of simulated plumpness ensues, which belies my distinct lack of motion and life. Disinfectant permeates all, for your protection. Though I would have wished to be stuffed with dried flowers and herbs, I cannot begrudge convention, especially given my current state.

What meaning would my life have had to you if I were meeting you just a few weeks ago? This husk, this slough house, a vehicle of bile and putrid phlegm would have been a conduit of love and ideation. But, the bloat you slit is not the seat of my intuition. It smells like a dead fart. Thank you for expressing the contents.

The years I had were bright and warm and beautiful. If only I had chosen cremation.

The Desert Witch Iterates Herself

“I do not live in this hole in the ground, I live in this body which floats very near to but slightly above the ground… for clarity, I should iterate that I am not truly contacting the ground with my bare feet inasmuch as I am simply not capable of such. None of us are. This fact is not supernatural, mostly philosophical, but I use this as a method by which I gain meaning from my life. I do not twist in this wind, for I am not the thing that the wind twists, though I sense it.

“Furthermore, the distinctions between sensation and being, yes they are discrete, but they are so often lumped together. The thought:  ‘What I sense is a direct result of my personhood.’ and:  ‘What I sense is the only truth.’

“No, I say. The sensate ‘demi-self’ is the version of you that lives hungry and twisting in the gully of your throat. One’s own self is divorced from the display or the signifiers of ‘self,’ amorphous, odorless, without mass or temperature. I, myself, my self, live(s) in here,” she touches her breast, “where the pumping blood and the wisp of my soul present one another with facts about their existences.”

She tilts her chin toward the rocky outcropping in the distance, where the dust from the desert obscures finer details. Wordlessly, she goes.

the Excise Chamber

Kid, do you know anything about science?

I've done everything I could possibly do to educate you about the ways of science, but you have proven to be a useless pupil. This is unfortunate because everyone had such high hopes for you. No such luck, babycakes. No suck luck for you. There is only one option, and that is to the Excise Chamber. I'll send your pineal gland off to the pet store.

It was time for you to be reincorporated into our lovely little group but you did not appreciate the rigors of our rites du payssage and, as such, you will need to be jettisoned. Kablooey. I have to admit that there were times, little guy, when I had such good faith in your ability to thrive. But there is nothing left for you except, yes, the Excise Chamber. Quit shivering like a gelatin.

You understand our precepts and processes, but you fail continually to abide, little hellion. Now please enjoy your disincorporation, by which I mean that you will be separated from your body directly, kitten. Posthaste.

The Excise Chamber, the room located directly below us here, is dank and full of insects which will bite you. This is the Tenderization phase in which the little creatures will cause your little bits of skin to become like gel, so that our instruments might navigate underneath. This is all in the name of what we stand for, which you have not stood for since you were able to shake away the amnion. I apologize, but I am required continually to remind you of your intense transgression. This seldom happens and it comes as a surprise to us. But the Excise Chamber exists for a reason, and you will see your torturous voice piped out through the vents just in the corner. From here we will monitor and know.

Day one

The air was dense as though an instance of disruption, such as a spark, could set all of the air on fire. The mouths of people, the lungs, filing suddenly with heat and plasma as the chain reaction sets the whole world alight.
But why? Why did we bask unaware in this sense air? Was it apathy or stupidity? It was some slight at the dinner table which caused mother's hackles to raise like an ocelot perched on an electrical wire. Some question gets raised regarding gratitude/ingratitude and the world proceeds to melt with gnashing and pissing.
She cleared the plates in silence, resenting everyone and wishing for great harm.
In the shower, she turned the water suddenly hot so that she could fill the room with steam and breathe it in deeply. She was breathing and applying soap to herself, rinsing with the singing rag and a very red hand, massaging the gingerly aching joints.
When she was finished, she was burnished and pleased. She lay in bed, drying her body and sensing the greatness that was to be bestowed on her in due course. The pictures on the wall displeased her and she recognized her superiority to them, nodding and stretching. What possibilities did she not have?
After breakfast, she sipped hot, black coffee. She did this not because she needed something with caffeine, nor because she enjoyed the heat/coffee flavor sensations. She most enjoyed expunging th flavors of breakfast from her mouth. Any time she had eaten, there was an opportunity for her breath to distract her. She disliked having the flavor of food already eaten in her mouth. This was not an empathy response such as, "I cannot expose another being to my garlic breath." She simply required her mouth to be clean at all times regardless of nourishment taken in.
Macaroons most acutely elicited this response. She used mint chewing gum to counteract the confection which stung the back of her throat. She ached slightly in her molars and tonsils.
She brushed her hair out to silken smooth and hung her highly-draped garments on her shoulders. She belted her caftan and put on a wide-brimmed hat and a felt poncho. Last, a silver ring in which was set a point of quartz, fitted perfectly on her left index finger.
At the office, she was known for her sharp tongue, which contrasted her friendly and slightly "floaty" demeanor otherwise. The Art Department knew her reputation and felt by turns guarded respect and resentment for her. She sat at her desk, lavishing her mouth with maroon lipstick. She pressed her lips together with a smack and blotted them on a tissue. She laughed.

Baby exists in a vacuum

Baby exists in a vacuum.
She is a projection of all her
mommy's
and poppy's
hopes and dreams of her well being.

They do not expect for Baby to have scurvy.
They do not expect for Baby to be a dancer at the thong ballet.
They do not expect for Baby to be a little boy.
They do not expect for Baby to go die in the bracken.

They feed Baby an orange
They feed Baby a cracker
They feed Baby an apple
They feed Baby a cracker
They feed Baby an eggshell
They feed Baby a bird
They feed Baby an orange
They feed Baby to lions

Poppy, give Baby this tiny wool bear
Poppy, give Baby a set of plastic keys
Mommy, give Baby a book full of kittens
Mommy, give Baby this blanket and bedspread

Baby exists in a vacuum.
Mommy, Poppy, teach Baby how to be alive
Poppy, Poppy, inscribe meaning for every utterance
Mommy, Mommy, make Baby into a cake

Baby, make Mommy lurch for survival
Baby, make Poppy spit up his bile

Swat at the hand that reaches for the hot thing
After her feces, please wash up the linen
Do not take milk baths, do not have sex
Do not make cookies, do not buy pets.
Feed Baby Feed Baby Feed Baby an orange
Feed Baby a cracker
Feed Baby a cracker, feed Baby a cracker

Feed Baby to wolves
Feed Baby to lions
Feed Baby to a pig
Feed Baby to cops
Give Baby a tazer
Give Baby some mace
Give Baby a dolly and dresses and lace

False Start

The sky was harsh and bright blue, nearly white at that hour. I stopped to look at the sky and imagine the relief of a shadow from a cloud or bird passing overhead. Light beat down on me with its full weight, sinking between each cotton fiber and bathing me in heat. Any movement could make my skin touch the heat from my heavy clothing, singeing and clinging. There was no relief from it. There was no life no heaven or respite. I could not possibly be the broad sweeping ocean that I intended myself to be. I was lost as a gull, drowned eight miles off the coast. That gull, at least, had the pleasure of bathing in a cool sea of salt and life. Here there was concrete and dampness only from the salt within. The salt of life creeping out from the wringing of the heat.