Kristy Bowen |
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the levitations 1. You can't see it til it's already too late. Already the bucket let down the well, the piano behind your teeth plinking. The hunger for it, gnawing the corners of the bed. Aspirin in the oatmeal hidden in the milk. Your hands so cold the birds won't land, won't even lend themselves to story. 2. Pain is beautiful, like lavender. They said they loved you for it, for your freckled wrist and the gears beneath your ribs. Something burning through the floor that smelled like creosote, gasoline. All those pins in your hair you couldn't count. All those shoes dropped in the river. 3. Three days they boil the meat. Unfold the fields outside the window. The emptied dovecote. You smell gunpowder and break your teeth on the windowsill. Scream higher, higher, until your mother cries. Can't see her face for all the shining. How she creases and folds the sheets into perfect squares. 4. A row of nightgowns pushes you from sleep. The light twitching against the wall like wings. You chew through a box of pencils til the throbbing stops. Bad ears. Bad dreams. Like the drowned, only bone dry. 5. The ouija board says no, yes, no. Spells out Clara, light, something soft panting beneath the table. Your hands so cold you could taste the dead like burned out matches. |
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