Grotesque Intimacy
My fake eyelashes are centipede legs.
Your fake moustache is a wooly slug.
Feel them flutter, feel them slither, feel them writhe
to get away from such intimate grotesqueries.
As for me, I will dance with it. I will closely embrace
the taste of carrion or at least make believe;
costume myself as the reaper's quaggy consort.
Fling me like chaff, brittle bracts, black burrs.
I'm flexuous enough to purr and pretend I revel in it.
Glammed-up, I'm scarecrow-esque.
The crows eat off my tapered fingers
and I cradle the stubs. Wrap them up
in white gauze. Bloody baptismal dress. Wormy bassinet.
A small handful of fresh mummies.
Glammed-up, you're hustler-esque.
A smooth skullcap hides the burls that protrude from
your misshapen head. Suspicious spongy mass.
Coiled colony of parasites. Question mark shaped
dread and razor sharp suckers.
Leeches can feel our vibrations
and sometimes enter through an orifice
and then become engorged
and then become immune to extraction
until they've had their fill of our strange fluids.
In the crow beaks, the violet pastilles of my fingertips.
In the parasite tails, the slime trail from your bleeding
crepe paper sash. We're being drained, smeared,
dragged into the lush desire for even darker disguises.
Beady-eyed sweetie. Zombie lips.
Feel the baby earwigs tickle your spine.
They know how you want to be a book
about decay, disgust, the justaposition
of brutal bite-marks and white sheets.
Dirty toe cleavage and polished nails.
I know what you need.
I will send you a tiny envelope
of toenail clippings, spit-stained
tatter of black gown where a black dog slobbered
before he bit and he must have been rabid
for all the frothing at the mouth I've done lately.
I will spoil you, lavish you
with parcels of detritus, with the crude rejectamenta
from between my teeth. Infinitesimal oddments,
fossilized squirrel fur, creamy nougat hardened
into dangerous pellets, pellicle scraped from creepy tongue.
I will show you my wrists. Little slits, little slits
for you to fish, for you to kiss, for you to fill
with your own venom and ephemera.
~
"Grotesque Intimacy" first appeared in the online lit mag Venereal Kittens (now defunct), as well as in Horrific Confection (BlazeVOX Books).
