Salvage
By Hedgie Choi
I have seen deer split open on the road and thought
that's exactly what
those
soft and gentle
fuckers
deserve.
Some things happened to me in my formative years that I don't want to tell you about
but some things happened to you too.
First: you say you feel nothing
Then, your eyes start to agree with you
Then one day, someone you love, probably, cries in front of you
And your only thought is 'when is dinner?'
Neil-hilborn-the-door
"The so-called 'psychotically depressed' person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote 'hopelessness' or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling." -- David Foster Wallace
Laika
Moscow street-mutt, unloved
stray. Eleven pounds of bone,
of pelt, of tail. Who can weigh
the heart of dog? What dials
or instruments may measure
loyalty; the desire, hard-wired,
to obey? Dogs have no gods,
know only to worship the hand
that feeds. There is no canine
word for pray. Brave little
cosmonaut, faithful to a fault;
caught and collared, Earth no
more than a distant ball with
which you cannot play. How
the words that sent you on
your way crackle through
the ragged dishes of your ears,
p>a comet’s tail of breaking
syllables that even now leave
their trail: Laika, in. Laika, lay.
Good girl, Laika. Wait. Stay.First Dog in Space - Brennig Davies
They say that, from space,
the Earth looks like a
small, blue ball, but how
did it look to you, Laika?
From that shuttle like a balloon
whose string they let go, and which
they never trained for recall?
They say that you were a stray
who never fought with other dogs,
and that the clever people called you pet names
through the wires of your shrinking cages,
and that, before you died, overheating
in that heavy, weightless cold, one of them
took you home, and you played with his kids.
They say that, from space,
the Earth looks like a
small, blue ball. I'll throw it
for you, Laika, if you'll chase it,
dart through the stratosphere
like a comet, undeserving
if its fate.
Jesus Fantasizes
It's the desexing that bothers me - as if I never had a boner or some lust, as if I had so much of God's business to consider that I never wanted kisses or a nail run down my back. I woke every morning the way men wake every morning. I sought some comfort in some touch and thought that much could be achieved if people made more love more often. I think I'd have made a pretty average father, by which I mean okay, by which I mean I wish. I would like to age and watch my children grow. I would like to hold on to my body.
When Did We See You Naked? Jesus as a Victim of Sexual Abuse BY JAYME R. REAVES, DAVID TOMBS AND ROCÍO FIGUEROA Poem by pádraig ó tuama
"Crude Conversations with Boys Who Fake Laughter' by Warsan Shire
He says ‘I don’t get it, why are you still a virgin at 24?’
He says ‘I don’t believe you, I’ve seen you walk, virgins don’t walk like that’
He says, ‘That ain’t natural, people are supposed to fuck.’
He asks ‘Why though? No offence though.’
I ask ‘When was your first time?’
He says ‘I was 12’
He says ‘I know what you’re thinking, that’s too young.’
I look at his knuckles, he has two good hands.
He says ‘She was older than me.’
I ask ‘How old?’
And he says ‘It’s better that the girl is older, that’s how I learnt all things I know’
He licks his lips.
I ask again ‘How old?’
He says ‘I could use one finger to make you sob’
I think of my brother in prison and I can’t remember his face.
I ask again ‘How old?’
He says ‘Boys become men in the laps of women, you know?’
I think of my mothers faced lined with her bad choices in men.
He says ‘If you were mine you wouldn’t get away with this shit, I’d eat you for hours, I’d gut you like fruit.’
I think of my cousins circumcision, how she feels like a mermaid, not human from the waist down.
He says ‘I’d look after you, you know?’
I laugh, I ask for the last time ‘How old?’
He says ’34.’
He says ‘She was beautiful though and I know what you’re thinking but it’s not like that, I’m a man, I’m a man, I’m a man. No one could ever hurt me’.
Swallowtail, by Brenna Twohy.
The medical history form reads, "Has someone physically, sexually or emotionally abused you?" with a box for yes and a box for no.
❒ I am mostly fine
❒ I am mostly fine but
❒ One Thanksgiving his mom told me this story about how as a child he found a butterfly in the yard with half a wing missing. He cupped it in his hands, brought it inside, and held it covered against his stomach for fear it would fly away. They called the animal hospital on the landline and were instructed to carefully clip the healthy wing to match the broken one.
❒ A cage of gentle
hands is stil a cage,
and I know this now.
❒ I would have climbed in the jar if he'd asked me.
I would have torn the other wing off myself.