“while transitioning through each breath
fixate
at mouths playing back recordings:
welcome to life-after“
**
you endure
until fire quits burning
on your wrists
*
there is a form to the body
that is shapeless.
the skin fragments
like paint on an antique
vase. peel back skin
to make blood but not to bleed out:
let the inner self relax.
the straight razors dash is brisk,
two lateral strips. the gist:
to become one with the dream.
*
you wear maggots
like rice earrings. eat
eyes like oysters,
suck them from the socket
of the shell. salt
dehydrates until your skin
hugs bones.your tongue dilapidated
than teeth release.
lips fall
from the jaw.
hair still grows across
your chest. you become
sterile.
*
half asleep, half amazed
you woke. seams
on your wrist are newly scabbed.
*
breached
from placenta
poured onto the floor
naked & cleansed.
the dark birth
purified him
washed dusk
from his eyes
opened the throat
& lungs inflated
so, like an infant,
he can cry up phlegm —
this war is over
is just begun.
*
you stumble into panic,
crawling across the yard
like a spider. on hands
& knees, you traverse over grass.
where is it that you’re escaping to?
nails root into the ground
as earthworms:
wild & covered in slime.
your eyes dance until they are focused.
your mouth is pregnant with a tongue
that will forgive you for drying up
like a stone that will crush your skull
& someone will find it as a mistake
carrying you home like a pulled tooth.
your limber cock, that swinging
pendulum like a trunk
an extension that will grow outward
as a limb
it rubs the skin, slaps the belly,
past dogs & cats & into the claustrophobic
abstract landscape of ghost shapes
mistaken for rotting darkness:
her breasts prepare to feed you.
they burst; a river erupts in milk.
*
when he slips
through the density
of weeds
everything becomes heavy.
he strikes a match.
he hears birds
like hacksaws
cut through leaves:
branches shake
while a leaf
loosely fumbles
to the ground.
he catches it
like a death-head moth,
carefully —
it tips off the edge
& driftsto the ground
becoming
a snack.
she sucks it
into her mouth. he froze
as her teeth
vanish in darkness.
he strikes a second match.
his ears turn
downward
focusing on her jaw
in its midst
of crunching leafy-bone.
*
red stalactites
recede from inside his wrist
& go after her tongue
like bayonets,
ripping out chunks
& what is left
retreats
back into her mouth.
*
startled, he drops the third match
into brush
& everything catches fire.
*
the tree’s tops
have settled into igniting
like wick
& her hair burns
& her skin melts
& the ground swells
below him& shifts.
*
under the first layer
of thick charcoal mud —
a pine box.
his heavy black foot
impels the lid.
a section of face
laughs underneath.
death’s deceased tongue:
“i have cut you down with yourself.”
dying rearranged his morning
& called him back to his dissolution.
depression
bit down too hard.
*
coming untethered
stud bystud, the realism
falls loose
& that is where
he found the surface
of hell
through the heavy
smokescreen
of diluted
eyes.
Kristin Garth & Pink Plastic House a tiny journal 