there is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
and I still can’t discern
 where I fit completely.
sometimes i flit about town
 with my paper point tongue
 and become the trap for them.
other days I sit quietly
and rearrange my stones
to surround pieces of paper
with words scribbled
as a representation of a symptom
of superstition.

 

when people say they are superstitious,
they usually mean they
don’t walk under ladders
or keep broken mirrors,
or if you’re Russian,
put your purse or keys on
the table.
when I say I’m superstitious,
I mean that if I think
about something too long
it begins to grow legs
and walk out so I can
see it better.

I begin to line the doors
with salt and brick
dust. I begin to line the
tub with black tourmaline
and smoky quartz. I
begin to line the bed with
kitchen knives and then
I begin to chant the
names.

“1/1/2017”

0

There is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
And I still can’t discern where I fit completely.

 

“april 4, 2017, journal entry”

0

“nice bomb, but it didn’t really

blow anything up.”

 

-hell (nice bomb), Robin Jackelow

0

 

shut up girl
and
be a soldier
the note on my hand
read, the impermanence
of the metaphor
not lost on me,
but also never found.

“12/31/2016”

0

first, I was not born with
a lot of fear and it confuses
others to find I shake
constantly. not literally
shake but fidget and
have to twiddle at all times.
this is
a tic. a tic is
characterized by involuntary
movement; a repercussion of
some hidden mechanism
to cope, neurological or, sincerely,
born from nothing
but exists within a person
regardless.
second,
I once saw the death of a man
I loved, but the face was blurry.
I just had a vision,
sharp, flash,
watching him fall through
a hole in a patch of ice
and disappear forever.
this was before.
before I knew who led who
across the lake.
before I could pull apart
threads and follow
them home.
before I could name things,
or rather, before
I could commit.
I won’t name the
color of his eyes
or hair. and I won’t tell
you anymore than
years ago,
 a friend dubbed me a title and
told me that I
give until I am robbed
and can give no more.

I did not know this man yet.

the year is 2016,
but the very end,
December and this is before
the dream of the cabin,
and the letters to,
let’s say “A”
and do the naming of them
alphabetically by chronological order
so as not to confuse anyone.
this was when  the unfurling began:
 every device I had for protection,
dissolving like the bounds
between, I can only say,
us and them.
this is before I knew that
this period of time
would bare great significance in
my development so I took
it too lightly. oh sure i enjoyed the
laughing and pacing and watching
my face melt into the mirror,
standing under streetlights for minutes
waiting for them to burst,
the three hour marches through snow
muttering, I just wish my notes
were neater, like it would all come
back now when he pressed
“record.” funny how
blackouts work.  I began a slow
fall into what textbooks
have described as
“a sustained mild
manic psychotic episode”
or possibly,
“a sustained dissociative fugue (of sorts)”
“spontaneous psychosis nos (trigger not known)”
                   the election of Donald trump
and what others say is
a
“kundalini awakening,
but rushed” as in
my crown burst open and
a snake jumped out
before I could process opening
my throat.
what others say is a
“nervous breakdown
from the pressure of grad school,
a demanding low paying job, and too
much time volunteering in harsh
climate or communities” or
a “sustained fantasy life
come to life via magic”
a “witch learning her craft”
a “possession by demons”
a “possession by ghosts”
a “possession of angels”
a “woman deemed saint by past sainthood”
a “possession by various channels”
an “alien abduction come back”
an “electronics gaining sentience
and communicating via music
via Spotify”
a “active fantasy life enlivened
due to self induce isolation”
a “nightly visitation”

I say
be careful what you
say.  

“switched places”

0

I want to hear about your battle
 in the forest,
he says.
Well it was a dream I had,
darling, I remind him.
yes but i want to hear about it
and record it, he is keeping
pace with me which impresses
me though I don’t let
him know that.
fine, but i want to use a
fake name.
why?
to protect myself from the evil
eye.

he thinks i might be crazy
 and i
enjoy this spectacle so i
 say  anything at all to him
without giving it a single
thought.

ok, what else?
he is perhaps, more earnest
than I expected.

any time i tell a lie
we have to start the story
over.
he laughs.
im serious.
there is a pause between
people that slices me
into tiny bits. it’s the gaze
of the pause I worry about.
I wish to crawl
inside them so they cannot see
me.
why don’t you just not lie?
that little lie about choice.

you have to record everything i say
from beginning to end and ill tell
you every single thing i remember
about the episode
and all the dreams
and every interaction
and every intuitive thought coming
true, every spell and every
man but every time i tell a lie
you have to wait for me
to start at the beginning
and retell everything.

I would find out years
later that he only wanted
to listen to me talk.
I was real slow with it,
not just my accent but
my deliberation,
and that sometimes
he didn’t record anything I said. 

how will i know you are lying?
I will interrupt the game
and say ive been lying,
i hold my hands up for
effect,  but
i wont tell you when and then
we will start over.
i will tell the new story as I see fit.

i do not tell him
that  I don’t remember much
or think about it much at
all.  I do not tell
him that none of this means
anything to me. whether
I tell the story or not has no
bearing on me. I just one day
sit down and let him
record me, wondering
what I will say.
wondering if I do say their
names.
wondering if I  am
 in love. wondering
if I ever tell anyone I love
them again.

Ok,  he says.
I love him because he doesn’t
make me try. 

My name is Lilian,
I begin.
And I once saw the death of
a man that I loved and terrified
asked if it could be me instead.

  (I do not tell him this is the end)

“datura moon”

0

“so I say from the hole
the names and I begin:

  1. I never loved you.
    2. I never loved you.
    3. I think I loved you and might still.
    4. I hope to love you.”

“and then what happened?”
he spits a little as he leans in
and because i am polite
I ignore him.
he’s kind of frenetic but
composed and I think
it’s a matter of being
too excited about the
story. he says it will
be anonymous.
I know better than to trust
any man or recording
but I have to be right
and show that I am right.
(2.)

I took a sip of water as he leaned in
and I felt the pressure of
electronics and promise
 between us.
the documentation of
it all; a Saturn, weight,
a pressure to say the right thing.
not as in flattering,
but correct.
to prove I am truthful.
to prove my ethics.

“and then I reneged it and said
I have no hope in love
and I’ve
never loved anyone.
 and then I stood there shaking
from the drop in temperature
for awhile finally adding:
and I never ever will.”

he laughed. he didn’t mean to,
it’s just I have a way of saying
things in a flat delivery
that denotes complete apathy
but it comes across as a
performance even though on almost
any day, I can retreat from
all emotion and literally
feel nothing or
have no attachment to myself.
which is why this experiment has been so difficult.

I also have a
circuitous way
of telling stories.
If I was being transparent,
I should have told him the first part.
that I  dug the hole
and jumped in
and waited for the
man to find me.
but instead I said
I fell in.
(3.)

so then I have to start over.

“the web”

“so I say from the hole
the names and I begin:

  1. I never loved you.
    2. I never loved you.
    3. I think I loved you and might still.
    4. I hope to love you.”

“and then what happened?”
he spits a little as he leans in
and because in am polite
I ignore him.
he’s kind of frenetic but
composed and I think
it’s a matter of being
too excited about the
story. he says it will
be anonymous.
I know better than to trust
any man or recording
but I have to be right
and show that I am right.
(2.)

I took a sip of water as he leaned in
and I felt the pressure of
electronics and promise
 between us.
the documentation of
it all; a Saturn, weight,
a pressure to say the right thing.
not as in flattering,
but correct.
to prove I am truthful.
to prove my ethics.

“and then I reneged it and said
I have no hope in love
and I’ve
never loved anyone.
 and then I stood there shaking
from the drop in temperature
for awhile finally adding:
and I never ever will.”

he laughed. he didn’t mean to,
it’s just I have a way of saying
things in a flat delivery
that denotes complete apathy
but it comes across as a
performance even though on almost
any day, I can retreat from
all emotion and literally
feel nothing or
have no attachment to myself.
which is why this experiment has been so difficult.

I also have a
circuitous way
of telling stories.
If I was being transparent,
I should have told him the first part.
that I  dug the hole
and jumped in
and waited for the
man to find me.
but instead I said
I fell in.
(3.)

so then I have to start over.

“the web”

0

it’s all projection.
this is why i chose a solitary life
of weaving in the first place.
you can’t trust a single thought
in your head or a word
anyone says.
when it first started,
i had to name them all.
each person.
and the lie.

i succumbed to a deep
psychosis that lasted
approximately three straight
years and ended abruptly
only days ago.
(1.)

they said to line the candles
up and name them:
each lie you told about
them, each hex you cast upon
them, and each way you
reneged a trap only
 later to place it
back.
they said if i could undo each one
I would find my way out.

 

I woke up in a hole
in the middle of the
forest with no recollection
of anything I’d said
or done. they said

Love.

will.

take.

time.

 

one of them threw me a
shovel.

0

you’ve been watching
jaguars move but otherwise
blind as fuck and 
petting foxes in a field
of green when you should
have been in motion.
you’ve been
 memorizing motion
without comitting to the
movement, atrophied:
the way you arm falls
asleep beneath your sullen
face as you wist away the days,
and the way your hands
grip anything within a one mile
radius forming little claws.
you are crippled
with entropy; an uncertainness
of order, a muddled prescription
of chant and everything that
leaves so willfully
must richochet again.
what’s the little joke about
choice?

I’ve been draping myself in
arms and
storm so you can see
as I traipse across
the forest floor
my tonsils growing
chelicerae,
my rib cage growing legs,
my bottom becoming fat
with thread and
I know what you like
and I know,
sweetheart,
that you may be a masochist
but we know that
you are game.

my name is Arachne,
nice to finally meet you.

you are writhing
game in snowflake threads
hung far above the
ground like
prey which leads
us back to witch, we said
be careful what you
 say. you said
my name is artemis
but you also said 

“arachne”

0

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