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Candice Wuehle
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and so i never felt the shame of having said it was okay. Living in the bowl of a mountain town, i believed in my own weather. i wore a utilitarian wreath, a uniform gauze. i can tell when wind will turn by the twisting of the fabric around my hips. They thought i was magic in reverse. The stage sprite who swings the spell–imagine a thread from my fingertip tied to the pupil of the sorcerer, imagine the crooked jerk of the index. But i did not draw the eye. i was the eye. When i clapped my wings, i was the feather and the air compressed. Hell's accordion breathes the breath of heaven. i never said it was okay sǝɥʇɐǝɹq uoᴉpɹoɔɔɐ s,llǝH ˙pǝssǝɹdɯoɔ ɹᴉɐ ǝɥʇ puɐ
to be inside another's atmosphere. ɹǝɥʇɐǝɟ ǝɥʇ sɐʍ ᴉ 'sƃuᴉʍ ʎɯ pǝddɐlɔ ᴉ uǝɥM |
was so much talking about the veil that i developed a dark room technique to erase the face other faces meet. Several secret stitches at the hairline to fasten myself to the minute before memory: a self–styled caul, witchless spell. Every birt h mark is avant garde but my groom cannot be reconciled to the tastes of time. My groom fears clearings. He asks me to touch him like he is a maze. Cornered, i became the knife that every month cuts the light from the moon. i abuse my protractor; i abuse my measuring tape. i remake my glowing gown out of beams. Garbled architecture; melting church; mirror in the floor reflecting the space between my throat and jaw: root of the tongue. How vow is the sound of curling around curling. The hottest oath. |
later they would say sick stuff. they would say i wanted to be a fashion photographer. because: i ate tubes of lipstick to have red teeth, a hard wax throat too resolute to penetrate. so: i grew out of red and into black and white. i vomited revlon until i was the lead with which i wrote my name and so i squeezed through sharp places until my shavings fell about my feet, until i was a shrill smudge. & they would say i wanted to be a fashion photographer. gross. as i walked to the roof i became able to imagine a map of life done in sketch. i became the thumb on the left hand of an engaged woman. covvered in a fine sheen, beautiful grease. the undersides of feathers, the exudations of a body becoming warm. listen, this is the clue that disproves the death. how do you tell the difference between a hot house and a mortuary? mushroom birth. listen, i'm the one who thumbed the city. i was birthed from a photo of a garden. and they would say i was born out of a bottle of perfume. a nice stink, a curated rot. as if i menstruated resin. molasses. tar. listen closer, in the event you believe i am dead, investigate the editrix. she'll have answers to all your questions about the difference between a model's body and a body. she'll have a delicate treatise. an argument for how the bone should be outlined by the s ki n, a tract on the ribcage. a pin. the editrix will be able to prove her innocence with a droplette of blood, a small puncture in the finger pad of the mannequin. alive. a swatch of eau de nil. a reason why a replica of nature is most natural. her breath will smell like a vvine, a green grip. as i walked to the roof i knew the only difference was in the destination. do you think this city is going anywhere? do you think the city of hell is going anywhere? do you think the city of heaven is going anywhere? i had lived through myself twice; i had made you enjoy my body as i enjoyed my body. i had protected my bones, reinvented the heart in the shape of a twirl. i guess they called me a fashion photographer for thisfor loving for imagining m y im age beside an unvased calla lily. a stalk and mask; the bloom of a second face. for pointing out how unemptied the room was when i was in it. and they would say i meant to disappear. garde a l'eau. as if i would ever orphan myself, as if i didn't have another form. |
looses the plasma: glo bule ensconced, slick as models or fish. Sequined ethics flash across the screen and if you believe in everything you see, you will believe light is in love with the disco ball. You will have to give up on the planets, on believing in the dark beam between the eclipse and the ear th. vince, imagine if i loved myself as little as this city dressed in the costume of another city. Vague Paris, dim Saturn. Obviously, i don't believe in boundaries; don't let them bury me in the rings of New York Cityy. . Tell them i said i'm going to hang, suspended organelle in the metropolitan cell. Tell them i will be here not being blonde, not reflecting in the surface of their mirrors. When i tap them on the shoulder, they won't know how beautiful i am. They'll wonder why the water is filled with light. Phosphorescent stutter, universal tongue. |
Metaphysical gurgle, the glottal click of the door to the throat as it unlatches its flesh lock to prove the body. Admit me with my ankles covered, admit i unsober the spirit of propriety with my heretical prom dress: teenage royalty trashing the king dom of heaven. Heaven, who loves crowns enough to make a hat of light, and so it takes a body to wear a halo. How hilarious is it to be as beautiful as a statue for no reason but to stand very still and be naked in front of everyone, to pin the pleated fabrics to the wall to force them to concede there is no out fit with out a body in the flat rag to ergo agree it takes a body to photograph the existence of an angel unless it's an angel took the photograph. Buzzy theft, missing laughter. |
Candice Wuehle is the author of the full–length collections DEATH INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (Action Books, 2020) and BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, August 2018) and the chapbooks VIBE CHECK (Garden–door Press, 2017), EARTH*AIR*FIRE*WATER*ÆTHER (Grey Books Press, 2015) and curse words: a guide in 19 steps for aspiring transmographs, (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Poems from DEATH INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, appear in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Black Warrior Review, The Bennington Review, and The New Delta Review. |
