Indy C. He is a dragon who has allowed himself to be Dewinged Sprawled and corpulent atop his hoard: Glittering bracelets (hairbands), silver pieces (earrings), Shoestrings, rubber bands (bands I pulled from a pulsating throat to save his nine lives) Once I found a spider in our basement Bulging and shaking and thrashing chitinous. I could have (should have) freed it to the grass beyond our door Instead I took it in a glass. (it hummed in fear, futile pleas made with longleg strokes) Up to the dragon’s throne where he Pulled it in with claws outstretched Plucked off the limbs with bobs of his head, Satisfied to continue the cycle. To prove his dominance, His primacy on the feral-born foodchain He swallowed it alive. Driven, in a maddened moment, by instinctual predator’s drive Stuffed into his genes by the successful dead. A leg in the carpet jungle The arachnid in agony (deserved) A mouse next time (he licks blood off his chin) Writhes with a slipper, A fool in his own court, Inanimate defender, Inconsequential (what does a slipper matter?) but he’ll Rip your ankles to shreds in your own home To prove he can. Bass-Boosted Two against one has never been fair so what does that make three against one? I unfurl my fingers and smile at them; we are bloody bags of meat. Beneath fluorescent lights I intend to show them what they become when reduced to battered flesh and broken noses. Three against one and I the one, the bane of worlds, the bruises painting over knuckles spelling out victory better than my teeth marks do. One tries to twist away. No, I say. No, and I ram a soft belly against a sink edge and she nearly vomits much like I nearly did after the first punch to the gut. No. After it's done nobody tries it again. They lick wounds while I shakily mend mine. a lie. they never stopped trying. fresh man I want to be a father, quickly embedded and left alone Though nobody can leave it alone. Eyes tear my words apart, Reducing parental desire to a puzzle The puzzle of brainsex and pronouns Of parts Not the whole of me But the pieces, Which can be carefully constructed To fit the narrative Talk about representation but the face on tv sure as hell Isn't mine Jaw’s not strong enough, hair’s not short enough-Do you want to be a boy? Is that what this is? Like being a woman isn't okay if you're not Long hair lipstick eyeshadow softburn sex smile I tell the only one that has a right to know And nobody else (But look at me, could I ever be a mother?) Dogchild breathing uncertain with a noseblood milk mustache catching devils in the back part of the brain a dreamcatcher modified to include child’s hair, sinew, tendon push right to watch it breathe a girlygirl in the sink, knitted entirely of what could have been dressed in blue flower flesh shed that shellskin pull the woman out of the girl’s piled bones too young to fight but smiling through the split knuckles not a knight in slickshine armor but a creature holding a blade in the mirror tapping knife blade to glass face should i could i the answer: YES (and) NO remember how it felt to lay in a bed of stuffed toys with a bleeding lip? Of course you do, How could you ever forget. Android (paranoia) She says not to worry but I lay in bed anyways. I think That it would be a horrible experience Not the explosion or the roar or the rough rupture of The insides of my ears Blood down my face. No The horror is the slow Inching Death. Slipping rotten flesh from from My bones Poison sliding down my throat with each Inhale Radiation clings to bone Wraps itself gently Lovingly Eases into my pores, all the thousands. I do not want my last moments to be Screaming in gluttonous flame. When the dogs find her It is half past three in the wildwood. The dogs, coiling infinite on the end of leashes Dig their spades into soft loam. Their breath solidifies in the air An air not their own anymore. She lifts her hands to the sky and the dogs The hungry things Crown her with running blood and rabbit’s guts. They fall back in satisfaction She turns in the dirt, blood in the sensitive Spots of her eyes. In the setting sun her gaze burns deep Enough to saw through bone marrow. She learns revenge in that moment If not revenge itself then the glorious ichor of Promise “I will,” she says, and imagines her hands Full of dog-guts. Construction Rings of children sway back and forth, chaff in the wind. Hungry gazes, wild dog eyes, roll over combatants that twist and turn and try to find a weakness, except there is no weakness; they are made and unborn all at once, ripped apart by the stares of compatriots. A chant builds on the wind, demanding: fight fight fight fight fight over and over until the two in the middle break apart, forgetting their humanity with a jump forward, a sweep of the fist. Noseblood between feet. Glasses shatter. A scream, great and inhuman and oh too young builds, spatters between lips onto the ground.
