Part 5: The act of maiming things (iteration)
“Everything has happened.”–Sylvia Plath
kitten ears and painted whiskers
tumble down my block in rows
rehearsed
in leotards and black lace gloves.
yowls float through
open window
TV taught them how to meow
for Kit Kats Snickers Almond Joys
male applause.
one bends over to tie her shoe
and seduce the nearest father;
he eyes the crevice peeking through her
black tights.
I’m dressed like Glinda the Good
Witch but sluttier: crop sequin top
and matching sequin mini skirt,
star wand and hair in pink curls
and crown and bubble gum lip gloss.
hovering in a sing song
way, I’m on my front steps
throwing out Peanut Chews and
I burned a sigil for this
I whisper to the small girl.
she wants attention from her own father:
a photograph or upward twirl,
burning torch,
purr in his lap while he strokes her hair
without fetish
or just acknowledgment that she is the prettiest
girl dressed up as space cat,
those others are unoriginal, just regular
cats, he says I love yours best
and pats her on her head
and there is no offense taken.
she will grow up to be even smaller
than she supposed:
silent enduring still,
not awake in her own power,
her own body
like a stillborn tiger:
expelled with a tear,
coated in the blood of her mother’s
screams as no one prepared her for the
slow cooked torture;
ecstasy following expelling
something
parasitic and omniscient;
a future rival.
she lands on the floor
fetal,
the thing no one wanted
without even a congratulations!
bouquet or a single lotus
to symbolize completion.
we aren’t worthy of those feline
endowments thrust upon us
when we are playing
mole carcass on the doormat
aborted from our burrowed holes
for something more vociferous
to grab onto and finish,
our kinship; the lions.
we are nothing like our ancestors.
our virile mothers
who know nothing of preening
or tail feathers.
take what they want.
they don’t grovel at their fathers’ feet.
they honor the slaughter,
the one they started
before the harvest and pay homage
to the sky for the water provided
before they stuff themselves
with vision.
we lack vision.
we just paint our nails black
and dress like witches,
talk shit;
start shit for derision.
and we keep turning to our men
for forgiveness when we are wayward
or won’t marry them
or stand up when they
crush our necks and they
say the rope is coming next.
we should be
stuffing our faces with the meat they provided,
learning fillet knives,
smiling like shovels and
burying them.
she’s got a silver tulle gown.
matching silver flats, black tights and
a silver and black crown.
eyes with those white orbs
and reserved.
I lean down to meet her.
Happy Halloween, princess,
I toss an extra piece in her
pumpkin: may the odds
be forever in your
favor.
“Halloween”
FINISHED
My name is Lilian,
I begin.
Short for Liliana.
Liliana isn’t that long
but it’s not a puritan name.
he nods.
I am choosing to document what
happened from beginning to end.
For clarity,
he interjects.
Can you explain what you mean
by what happened?
I don’t mention that he interrupted
me, that I was explaining it.
instead I smile sweetly and
say of course,
I am going to tell you the story
of how I secretly murdered three men
and got away with it.
this was years ago of course,
I wave my hands over the table.
he nods.
he has already told me that if I want him
to stop recording I just hold my hand up.
I smile.
I smile.
I smile, and a sweet voice
coos
stay.
I take a deep breath and begin
to tell it all in linear order.
my first instinct is to freeze,
then fight then flee.
then confess everything.
“Lilian”
I first named myself
Sada Black.
this was years ago,
January 2017.
actually I first named myself
Sarah Recusant, sometime
spring of 2012.
I used to meet strange men
in strange places or in my studio
apartment, linoleum flooring
covered in dust and let them
photograph me naked,
legs closed and grit
when they asked for more.
I have never been nice.
I have always been a nihilist.
I’ve always been ethnically
and age ambiguous.
I’ve always had
a propensity for lies,
or as my family
cutely named them,
jokes.
secrets.
I do better solo.
shoplift solo.
grift solo.
wander solo.
walk.
when I began to walk the night
in heels, I began to emit
a low growl to evoke
the corner walls to talk.
when I began to tell the jokes,
I began to show them
my letter opener first.
when I began to crack a smile,
they felt the first pinch of skin
opening.
I give an inch, you
take a mile?
when they cried out,
I began to review the rules:
1. Do not make a single sound.
and I lifted my skirt to
show them the right leg
with the right one to cut.
“Sada Black”
sarah,
we are begging you
to run away from this.
throughout my life,
I’ve heard this little voice:
run.
that’s all it would say
run
and I used to think it was asking me to run
specifically
from a feeling or person
or there was a danger in my mind,
as it always happened when I daydreamed.
entombed in that kind of fanciful wave.
the intrusive thought happened
so frequently and didn’t align
with my natural healing
which was to stare at a mirror
that’s also a lie.
my natural inclination is
to freeze, fight
then flee.
I was told that when it started
a voice that sounded like
mine would start to repeat things to
me but not to be alarmed
and
try not to repeat them out loud
as she says them.
that was the trick.
keep walking calmly and wait until you
hear run.
run.
always sounding like mine
but less scratchy from the daily
inhalation
so I can’t discern between
thoughts, preternatural omens
or the fantastic bubble I keep
my life immured inside like
quiet coffin, or
orchestra.
don’t touch that.
I stand up in six inch platforms
my name is Catarina Kacyrek.
jaw shut, stern, no feeling behind
his eyes. me? I’m chilling,
fresh stamped cattle on
cattle ranch.
you polish? he says in
a thick Russian accent.
third generation,
I say without tremble
may I come in?
I have to be invited.
but not only that,
I’m surrounded by two
large men with two fillets
in mind so I am a bit
stalling. understanding
suddenly when I hear the
meek
run and also
most men roll in packs,
and a gift:
he who stands at the place,
goes back.
but my first inclination is to
freeze,
then fight.
“the aliases” or “the woman who saw her own death”
“your end game is establishing psychic stability
with extreme ordeals as part of your
metamorphosis.”
my need for superfluous
fluctuations in behavior,
lifestyle and mood.
I am God-drawn,
celibate,
obsessively
testing myself and
binding myself to
new conviction,
I am wrapping myself
in my insistent
unhinging,
and my lovers’ brides
for the way they scream your
name into the pillow.
but I am distant.
I am giant.
I am waving my hands
in the air and calling it
time.
the solution to all things
is to wait. oh, I am far,
far away and
quiet in my cave,
becoming whatever I say
am..
becoming whatever I say.
be careful what you say.
“the magician”
sarah,
we are begging you
to run away from this.
I was told that when it started
a voice that sounded like
mine would start to repeat things to
me but not to be alarmed and
try not to repeat them out loud.
keep walking calmly and wait until you
hear run.
I stand up,
my name is Catarina Kacyrek.
you polish?
third generation.
I say this proudly.
may I come in?
I have to be invited.
“the aliases”
what does the word emotionally available mean to you?
my therapist asks me.
it’s nonsense, I think,
no one is ready.
I know my problems.
have taken inventory.
taken a fourth step.
haven’t taken a drink in years.
seen this woman every two weeks
for four of them.
t’s amazing how mired in
a cloud you can be while constantly
checking yourself.
this is the cloud I live in:
of close but never ready.
“I have that effect on people,”
I accidentally say out loud.
what effect?
she asks scrupulously.
sometimes I just stop in the middle of things,
realize I am murmuring or gesturing
or five miles past where I need to be.
it’s happened.
my knees are weak.
i’m outside in front of a brick townhouse
with a white bunny on the window and in
light yellow letters it says
“Happy Easter!”
I have no idea what day it is and
I want to take the mask off.
no keep the mask on.
it’s dirty outside.
I used to stick my hands
squarely in mud and
pull up clumps to catch worms.
nothing is ever coming back.
I have that effect on people.
“I can’t believe im gonna fucking live
through this,”I say out loud and a woman
with a chihuahua
walks the other way.
of what?
I hear her say.
what effect?
I really shouldn’t lie this much
I think to myself but I keep going,
keeping appointments,
keeping arrangements.
my thighs burn.
I don’t drink enough water.
I meet him at the corner of 12th and locust.
I keep my mask on.
I don’t extend my hand
but I turn on: a bright
bulb of sanguine excitement.
Hi!
I’m Ava Allinger,
the one who emailed you.
I am a nurse at Jefferson
looking for some extra disposable
scalpels.
I feel like I should tell my therapist
about the aliases,
and the lies but instead
I just say,
I dont know what I mean
and shrug.
“the aliases”
but to you there’s no difference between
decimation and solution,
so you’re palms out
begging for it
full of resolve
and here comes the reaper
wearing your blood.
“Saturn in Scorpio”
this was years ago.
the first time I told them about it.
sitting on the edge of the bay
on a borrowed blanket,
I was vomiting up
an Everclear Slurpee
and peeling back the bottom
of your parent’s quilt realizing
I had covered the entrance of the
ghost crab’s home.
I was embroiled in my own
deafening philosophy
about the closing of the day;
the way it moved–
death,
like an itinerant wave
that followed me
and only me,
everywhere.
I coughed that up second,
and finally to tell you
the rituals were there to
keep me safe.
the tide crept back
and I heard you light a cigarette,
felt myself starting to drown again
and then your hand on my thigh
and then nothing at all.
pain subsides in very
miniscule amounts
of time
if you don’t
repeat the
story.
(do not repeat the story)
but I’m
witnessing plane crashes
and matching the numbers to the proper
order, reorganizing mantles
and bleaching my teeth and
every inch of my house.
first, you have to feel safe.
I begin to build the glass
around me
and turning to you again, I
implore you to pick a title and
stick with it. for me, I say:
do you like warnings or do you
like to drown?
I think at some point
you have earned the right to say
I know already because you lived it
without acquiescing to
authority so I asked
to see it first:
the river’s mouth,
even though they said
I’d never make it.
I never said I didn’t
deserve it
just that I could outrun it
if they gave it.
“warnings”
daturamoon.com 