MissCoral

I. there's a man tunneling in my bones who carves scrimshaw, cracks soul with shovel fingers and he keeps me still with a finger on my jaw, waking, aching, unravelling into a tangle of tissue and tendons stretching across my body; terse muscles pop as I strain away. he whistles hollow rhythms mother used to sing, lopsided notes sinking like an October storm-- exhaling autumn air, he pools reason to cough to my mouth, between my teeth--and cavities filled with silver etching melt down into years and names that could never entirely fit into the ivory hollows of my genealogy. my ribs fit into a family crest like a wolverine

i. our crepe paper lungs were failing already, big breaths bottled into our grey stomachs like iron clasps, pinching together the lining of our organs into origami creases and the methodical twists of gears-- we hold our breath so we can still believe that we can breathe when we wish to. ii. the steeldrum hums into our hollow bones and falls into folds and withering words that write our pale little cranes with their broken wings and crackling feet, oily feathers stained with gray rage. they are silent lies and nothing more when the steeldrum stops, because the click-clacks of crane beaks are much more persistent than t

under soft skin of lilies and quiet water tension, creeping into green veins, we lie with glassy eyes and exhale psalms and she uses her hands to tell me she's a seraph, that she likes to sing, that each time her six-winged breast beats, she can feel it in her ears. her hands burn against mine like copper and I wonder how they painted her in constantinople, how they reconciled stealing god away with a face like that, how all the slaves took to an angel on the wall, if they remembered their prayers at all, if they faced her during the call.

Heavyheavy in your arms, with love spilled red onto your sleeves-- my eyes are bound to the grim way you set your shoulders into the shovel, and I hold myself close to the painter as he strokes glaze onto my irises, readying me for hellfire; I watch you as he does, thinking. You carry me gently, caress limp hair with coarse fingers and set me into the sounds of soil; gripping the sides of my shoulders with rigor mortis fingers, there's a cross on my chest-- and I wonder why there isn't a god, why they haven't come and where the light is. (Why is everything still so dark?) Setting into ceramic and stone and sweet calcification,

Let's forget the things we were told before, before our lips started moving in the ways that they did and before we learned to breathe with our lungs; we've left potential behind the veil of things that never really mattered, discarding all those little lights like they were lies and fireflies and inconsequential, when that innocence is what we needed most. Let's find a boat and stroke our away from false knowledge and reality fideism... let's find a shore to rest our weary arms and scrape ourselves across the sand; I want unnatural rhythms finding their way through my veins and I want the tide and the oar to teach me how to s

Day 1: Here we are, at the brink of a beginning: I don't know if I've ever been more terrified. My feet are slipping towards the edge with its pebble shedding and ominously long hesitation, and I can't quite see if it's heaven at the bottom, or something a bit more akin to hell-- I have to get closer. But I sit and wait to find the knowledge somewhere in the time I spend; but let's leave atrophy behind me; I'll try to stop itching at my new skin and shed the old... I need to save my nails for digging in the earth and tearing under the soil to find the satisfaction of aching muscles, unused to such work. And here, here's a step cl

I. In a railroad novel we break between the blasts of rattling carraiges and watch the stars warped by old, scratched plastic windows. We fall into the dark following each flicker of the buzzing lights and leave letters behind us in the silence and the second hand of a clock in the space between our clasped fingers, and we sing together with silent, unmoving mouths. Whispering under the grumbles of the train and the rain, I pray with my lips to your palm, and I wonder if you can feel my words, brushing your skin and seeping into your pores:     Keep us cradled here in the drums of the rain, where we cannot hear,     and let t

in these bodies we live with velvet thorns piercing our sides and silver spoons caught in our throat; let's step further into this plush decrepitude and teach ourselves to drink tea with pinkies raised and practice patience enough to watch the vermilion leaves flower back into our fortunes-- we can read them in the dark, and swirl fate about with the tips of our fingers into the Grim, because money can get you just about anywhere, even in Hell...

Under oaken arms, we can't help but bend and break; and so here, right now, we fall into hoarseness and frustration, crying out "we don't want you to like us or know us or even smile when we smile" to the audience who smile and nod and raise their hands up to us in religion and close their eyes, blossoming with emotion. We hold ourselves in our lies, pressing them with fervored fingers into our aching diaphragm, incisions slicing our breath in two from our four-chambered pulse to the aorta: clean cut and cold in the winter. Words escaped through the piercings, crying out, "holyholyholy", with our tongue held to our teeth, bloody. (

You always spoke soft, night-eyes: slow and simple with clouds in your mouth and starlight pressing lips to your closed eyes-- you breathed in sight, deep and still, exhaling midnight air and carving constellations with your metronome hands, far out of our arms' length. Always always out of reach, you were fluent in the language of the moon speaking to the sun--though you never quite knew what you were saying, and neither did the words. When the night finally turned to bitter sunlight, you blinked in steady tip-taps on the ground and spoke with eyelash rustling eyelash, unable to do more. Steps heavy with the weight of garner