Interrogative

Who was involved?
 
A woman furnished in looking down unloved across time
hangs from ceiling. No ribbon.
Wants to free from candyroot.
Other flaring yellows.
 
She is not responsible
for loving templates.
Her breasts neutralized
in too-long exposures
(otherwise known as a blur).
Angularity of time spun out
beneath her dress, orphaned from touch.
It is every single thing toothed.
 
Soon, a tableau of fear
signs the contract.
Whipped like that. In that way
grief colors in the lines
of good news.
Sensor gnawed
by only deadbolts.
Her arms now doors
to rooms without surgery
—all clean.
 
Water witches, dowsing.
A horse upside-down, kicking.
Her whole life: nude
on a public beach.
 
Her cold dinners,
her tilted shorelines,
her rude blackout.
 
*
 
Charlatans
all of them.
Fake cures
& psychic abilities.
When stripped of props
their alibis suck.
 
Here they choose to walk
their dilemmas toward me
 
March of the young departed
sticky as a blood-clot.
 
A lethal smothering, something soft
Face down, caught in their fibers
 
or
 
Alphas, smocked and funded
speak in snores, end parties
 
They scare me as they smoke
in front of children.
 
What happened (and what are the consequences)?
 
About her daughter,
Betty Woodman says,
“Her life wasn’t a series of miseries.”
Aware that all women blend into walls—
More than plucked, ripped out
Willing to be enigmatic
They are breaths of porcelain,
cults of blonde. Freezing together.
Stunningly,
we cannot backtrack closeness.
Instead, we disappear
into corners of a blank room
bending with its curves.
 
Rust won’t bond well
just takes up more space
paints barns red.
Snagged roof forgot its shingles.
Why unripe so noisy?
I press talk key, hear static.
Put in a cast
to keep her still.
 
To be literal:
loneliness that stalks undying
is a kind of sepsis
a serious condition—
that loneliness
a glass you can no longer drink from
cuts the gum.
A traffic roundabout
that keeps returning you back
to your smallest shadow.
This tank does not move.
Good moods
stuck to forest floor
rinse into soot
from incomplete burning
 
A seiche is a standing wave
in a closed body of water.
 
When did it happen?
 
Before the vomit, pre-natal
outright shy and near-sighted.
 
I came into this world illdefined,
a failed image; how I see
 
Time blown in a bottle
eaten by fluted blues, all ridged
 
Missing summers axe years
mutant without their mellow
 
Cycles driven insane by heat
stress eventually lose warmth
 
Bodies under boarded windows
latch on, cling to flat
 
featureless beginnings
of a storm.
 
It only seems like I am aggressively fading
This cold storage has aim, I’m not really waiting
 
When air moves over a colder surface
I’m there picking up after rain
 
Once thought of as extra special
I spun webs vertical, trusted myself
 
And I recall when my immunity
wore the face of being liked
 
Final push comes stillborn
All hours off-peak.
 
Final sleep seals gateway
meant to prevent a siege.
 
Where did it happen?
 
Someplace where colors remain immature
in easterly November: tonal bands of sinlessness.
 
There is no neon
when I steer inward from my braids
 
Let’s look at the spot in the mind
where memory’s fatty, in love.
Quiet ache of a heel twisting
at the end of a runway
 
Between tonsils of deadened language
paresis of terms for daybreak
 
Thrush, overgrown, covers
oneness in its patches
 
It’s not
a very good life skill.
 
Not devourer, but consequences last
needing machinery to connect
Things, flung into pulp cavity of a tusk
sensitive stuff in the hollow.
 
Coil of a drain snake used
for tougher jobs, deeper sources
 
At the well-head, fed
by deep vein.
 
it will be OK
to drink; filtered by sinking
 
through the ground and up
lighting the right number of candles
 
in front of a sink
its final drops, the pause
 
between syringes and sorrys.
 
metering inexcusable fog
mistaken for a fixed self.
 
Her tagged feet
set a Pagan city ruthless
Altered state of cultist
chants for longer life.
 
moldy at gas gauge
darkroom dip-dunk
 
Base of a gravestone
where memorial is attached.
 
Where we place people
in the picture matters
 
Why did it happen?
 
The womb shouldn’t be this:
passing down weird shit
 
Toddlers forced to hug
future versions of themselves who lost their loud.
 
Sorta the norm don’t know
better to wear out the same boots
 
Almost like polite mourners forgetting
their role is to be melodramatic.
 
An end-of-life doula makes a house out of me
takes my good jokes, my soft things
 
Not only my death mask
that can’t be proven below the home
 
Every face turned over unblinking
I am pregnant with their terror.
 
I acted alone
but also with everyone
And what if
my expression stays like this?
 
How did it happen?
 
Expired eyelids villain down the mind.