Author: caracaracara
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Rome, NY
At night, the grumbling of frogs and toads and locustsSomething howls in the distance, variegating tones but never closer: tied or bound, probably, and pissed offAll stars blanket and planes arch across this needlework, making quiet fissures – something potent tamed in service of holidays to wherever Albany Airport even flies to – Not a
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Soup
Every day I am born anew with loveas all turns to sinewMy brothers, broken back into soup I want to live and I will not turn away from itEyes must be prised open with matchsticks,twisting to all the things that we do I will not forgive myself.Look as they’re pestled to sweetGlitters, returned to supernovae
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The end of the holiday, or Portunus vs Surgat
Throughout the month: Portunus looks over us, god of waterways and gateways and keys and doors. Marseille is often white hot. At night, we keep our doors closed . One week to go: I go on a date with a very rich man and talk exclusively about air conditioning (“love it!”) and recommendations for his
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Swimming at the spa hotel
Drinking some champagne and gallivanting to the pool. We are so brave and so big, hand in hand and smoking loops past the chalets. I’ll say it if no one else will – we are incorrigible! We thrash in the water and he lets me win a length, I think because it’s my birthday. I
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Man on the Victoria Line
A young man with a backpack pushes past the closing doors at Highbury, a shell shocked look and an upturned nose. An old woman sits to write the address on an envelope. We stand. Within 30 seconds the man has slowly sunk to his knees at the central pole as though to prostrate: he writhes
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Hoarding
I brought my bike to the fix-up place the other day. It’d been sitting outside my friend’s shop for a few months, teens had picked off the saddle, the back wheel rubbed against the brake with every rotation. Still, I thought better to fix it than replace it. But as it turns out, cheaper to
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Birthday
she flirts with the crystal ball that is her now antagonising hands to fondle her coldness, smooth her hair to glass with human fingers Ships in bottles, auroras, galaxied into air bubbles Frankenstein’s monster rebuilding itself with a Protestant stoicism Return the hymn sheets to the printer, hum our fizzing tune of physics and excoriations
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Sound Bath
There’s a bit towards the end of the sound bath where the ruckus quietens and distils into something smaller and more potent than all its parts: like the image of bunnies bouncing in loops around verdant slopes, like the sound of the feeling of a pea aubergine bursting against the weight of your teeth. It
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September 2022
The singular human experience, as far as I can tell, is: liquid mercury romance sloshing around your mouth and your chest; texts from your estranged father telling you about cereal bars on mega discount that you simply cannot miss out on; illnesses and worthy recuperations, or, often, death; rot and decay with no regrowth, salted;
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Onion
Not shame in a Catholic way but in the gulping down insects way rushing around town with an air of busyness distracting myself from you. The shame of malleability, how I’m a stick of rock left in a damp place, all spiky looks but really spools of need, and so much interest in pleasing. A