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The Hiss Quarterly Vol. 4 ~ Issue 4 Slip Out The Back, Jack. The Anatomy Of Abandonment |
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Absolutely Modern: A Portrait of a Girl The lilacs in your hands won't dissolve or blur. Somehow you think she will go away like your father. The past is filled with broken crayons and the pigeons your brother stoned when he wanted to watch something bleed. There was always bread on the table and thick slabs of meat, but what you hungered for never fit on a platter, never filled you up. You fell into your own strategies. What was shoved in your mouth, you swallowed. At night in your room, you counted black stones collected beside a river glistening with something invisible, something kind but consuming like sickness or rain. Is it true a girl is born not knowing what to keep, what to give away? Losses add up to loneliness and then what? See how your fingers curl around wet stems. Even these petals are weighing you down. |
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Last Night I drank too much tea, spilled too many stories. In the morning, my fists filled with excrement and forewarning. How much would you give to hear the rest? Most of what you know is filler. The bits left out are obvious but go unnoticed, like gaping wounds, empty eye sockets. What do you possess except a priest's black pocket of regret? You try too hard to convince me you'll stay. I already taste the pavement when you kiss me. A motive floats through your fingers and I try to catch it before it lands, yellow-wings open like a book, a diary written by a Chinese concubine, flecks of mascara smudging the ivory page. Dilemma is a shadow pressing the small of my back. I have wanted so long to tell the whole story. I have struggled so hard to keep what is mine. |  |
