Editor’s Note: After the painting Sphinx and Barbie by Renate Druks 1963
1.
a silhouette was standing under the comfort of anesthetic wings,
while the carcinogenic sun spit light.
she climaxed under a sky that masqueraded as a blind man,
watching as each of its slits closed,
as each open eye fled,
to be returned at a later time under the sign of the mourning dove.
(she repurposed her passion under a sun that had forgotten its purpose
a sun trapped in a leather encasement writhing on a beach whose
ocean had forgotten its purpose)
dulcet moans wafted,
coupled with waves of smoke descending
to be picked apart by sirens of common sin.
rows of statues
rows of holiness
embryos in a sticky church interior,
she counted the beckoning of beating time as
a meat-machine hummed.
speaking harshly,
low tone drifting,
she kept her eyes closed.
this is the only transcript of the event:
“i throb with a fragile distant remembering of a children’s book. i loved it so. the story goes: the female bat had been injured and discovered by a hunter in the forest. the man took her home and nursed her back to health.
when she was recovered, he adorned her wings with the colors and images of stained glass. after admiring her stainless steel reflection and tasting the tresses of the audiences, she pierced the hunter’s jugular and drank deeply. deeply. he smiled his last breath (a climax gasp) as she proudly disappeared into the night sky. several planets whimpered. whisper whisper. nostalgic blood aroma.”
in a slow low voice with whisper touch,
behind her hot low breathing,
she tasted a soup of frankincense words,
guilty erasing sounds caught in her throat.
it was a case of 1 occupant / 1 spectator searched by plaster hands,
as rigid forms rose to life
convulsing as penitents dropped tokens in the confessional
to keep the screen up
to keep the broadcast live
twitching relishing terminal diseases
her garments ripped,
she crawled she trawled behind
always behind
carrying an electric torture-net,
gathering up prey,
a tongue of a life-long advertisement:
“i wish you wouldn’t call. i have a bad feeling now. sit back on your hands. you won’t see him again satisfied.”
2.
a traumatic tattoo of an icon of
cosmetology crying before the bare wood walls.
it’s hard to believe,
but our film had a nice story line,
it should be stored in our long-term memory.
it was formed of composite particles known
only as attention span.
they were standing on meat altars,
waiting for a price check and requisite orgasm.
flashbulb memories are clearly episodic now.
the capacity of sensory memories exploded on her eyes.
hadrons-quarks turned on as
hard-ons turned in on themselves.
long-term buffering of the centerfold imagery in
the space-age bachelor pad that had become the crime scene.
this is where she left the corpses and (regretfully)
she had left some traceable evidence.
they will find out the identity of the magickal holy number
wrapped up tightly in a flesh package of tanned hides
hidden under slow moving desert skies situated very
close to Las Vegas, Nevada.
right near that other spot that the locals always talk about.
she then asked for news of the assassination.
she was naked again counting the windows,
outside a house again wiggling hips in vain,
marking the maybes of the sphinx at an undisclosed location,
punctuated by ragged breath
moist against her face accenting her gentle tears.
the doll has been hidden in the workshop for weeks waiting
on a new set of blind eyes,
speaking about the hybrid of afternoons that
had become embedded in her plasticon flesh,
birthing sad memories of childhood.
Barbie is very much alive today.
start the car exhaust
fumes burn/ back/ forward/ drive (blackness between red) to
the trapped room where figures dangled.
somewhat hidden she watched her lovers castaway
behind the thin fabric breaking wheel burning crucifixion,
crushing the infernal catalog.
DNA was recombined into a serpent-headed tail.
hide the tears as more victims of
mass murder are etched into the falling mountain’s
degenerate glory.
her smile slid towards her navel and back to the other eye as
she retrieved what was left of her vagina to bury on the outskirts.
(her cunt juice must have sensed their innocence)
bringing herself down,
slowly embracing pagan thinking,
pointing out the day count in the folds of her labia,
resting on pillows she might receive
a divine nothing a great whatsit.
cobras attacked a description of an appearance
fangs squirted in secret
impregnating waters under the dirt,
pushing the hem away.
pushed them away right dead in front of the local snake-charmer cults
retained by paralyzed time.
while embracing hieroglyphs,
this myth had become very important to her.
give in and let go
the cobra blood attached itself to her,
turned it all to clay according to the outlines in the Book of the Dead.
clear hands flashing,
she commenced the classical teasing of the
species augmented by her deadly tasty magickal skills,
that had been long dormant in moist holes
her fingernails scraped the stars until they bled milk that
cascaded over her lips so she could easily shed her outer skins
clear eyes flashing,
split tongue flicking,
as dancing pollinators licked things raw
A native New Yorker, Peter Marra continues to reside in New York City.
His earliest recollection of the writing process is, as a 1st grader, creating a children’s book with illustrations. The only memory he has of this project is a page that contained a crayon drawing of an airplane caught in a storm. The caption read: “The people are on a plane. It is going to crash. They are very scared.” A Dadaist and Surrealist, Peter Marra’s writings explore alienation, addiction, love, secrets, and obsessions. He has had over 200 poems published either in print or online in over 25 journals. Peter’s latest published work is
approximate lovers (downtown materialaktion) published by Bone Orchard Press:
(http://boneorchardpress.blogspot.com/2014/04/approximate-lovers-downtown.html)
Peter’s e-chapbook Sins of the Go-Go Girls, was published in 2013 by Why Vandalism? Press:
http://journal.whyvandalism.com/sins-of-the-go-go-girls.html
peep-o-rama available as a Kindle Edition at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Peep-O-Rama-Peter…/dp/B00GVM4QQU
–Art by Milan Vopálenský & Esmahan Özkan