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I didn’t turn this in, but it was fun to work with, so here is some digital doodling for the world.

 

Decisions

Rain from the chandelier like cobwebs

bind my arms to my flanks like ballerina tulle

Pirouette, let yourself be raptured and captured

but keep your lipstick mouth closed while they slurp your vital juices through your gill slits.

Mon dieu! Such pretty words

s’arrachent de moi like half-winged birds

fledging despite knowledge of death nearing.

Étudiez à l’étranger and never be afraid

of the waves of red ink that snap to a plane propellor’s thrum

sur la haute mer. Lointaine, je serais

moi, je serais toi

je serais

n’importe quoi je serais belle

mais pas assez

to gain back your admittance-

Pretty words, after all, can’t patch

together the dismembered mortar

of a crumbling cheek reanimate the womb’s blood

dreams splattered across the walls along with pictures of rose waterfalls and lake boats in Italy

pretty words, after all

still louse with mousy hair and flat-nosed mïaou

Decisions.

Abandonne

the sun scribbled over in red ink:

a staircase to Venus, petering out as the pen runs dry

from too many years of ennumerating no on paper and the ladylike line descends

to meet the sack of organs aggregated at the foot of the staircase in Walker Hall and shivering in the breeze from the Automatic Caution Door

was I too real?

J’suis désolée

exactly comme a desert

milked by babies born then torn

I know I am not the only mother to be eaten inside out by her spawn

but I am the only one to announce to

the world (of fleas metropolizing the bottom of the stairs) that I was

desolate.

Image credits in order of appearance:

By Kellogg, Vernon L. (Vernon Lyman), 1867-1937 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/21045557580/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/elementaryzoolog00kell/#page/n426/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43028405

Thomas Eakins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons