1.
in a dirty lake downtown
they’re holding auditions for the
best dead girl of the century
and I am the forty first one in line,
not wearing the right blue dress,
my hair is working itself up into intestinal knots
when it should be trailing behind me
like airplane banners at the beach
I am concerned about parts of me
floating incorrectly when tested against
the milky water
is the thing with witches that they float,
or what?
what I lack in precision of recall
I make up for in my love
of other specificities—
undoing certain knots,
wetting thread with my tongue,
pressing hot keys into one eye,
then the other
this places me high in the ‘aspirations’ round
but the questions start getting more difficult
and some bodies around me are
casting hazy white light as the dark comes up,
which mine will not do
no matter how hard I hit
in any different spot
to find the switch that turns me on
2.
what do you know
about female violence
when it goes from the inside out
and not the other way around?
--a glove made of teeth will cut any hand to fit.
3.
the line between clean and dirty
looks a lot like the shore of a lake in
the northwestern pines,
and me riding it,
some cool blue body you think you recognize
from a portrait in my parent’s living room
the line between dead and alive is not a line at all;
it is a series of holes, concentric circles,
a motel shower drain at the edge of the universe
that my light is slipping through like syrup
the line between you and me is
the thin skin of my still open eye
and my drain hole pupil
on my side I am looking back
hello
4.
at the dead girl contest the judges ask,
how much can you hold in your breath
how serene can your face go without any muscles
and could flower petals adhere to your skin
without glue, a lot of them,
a whole wreath really
some girls are being rolled in skeins of plastic and
others are being dropped from medium heights
to see how they drape when they land
some are good, bonelessly elegant
some bend at furious angles and those
get only a handshake and a clean sheet
to cover themselves in
I am being pushed closer to the edge of the lake
really it’s just a big pond and
there are chip bags stuck in the grate of the fountain
I am thirty eighth in line,
hoping to win the gift certificate at least
it doesn’t matter where it’s for
5.
what do you know about the dead girl’s agency?
--Lord, we know what we are,
but know not what
we may be.
6.
the moss at the lake bottom is so soft
like deer or boys must feel in human hands
I watch them from behind the knots of trees;
they drink and dip their feet in by the bank,
the sharp dark hooves and the dirty toenails,
the pink tongues darting in and out of mouths
which make sounds that are lush and harsh and warm
the flowers in my hair are barely flowers;
just filaments of something that was flesh
my eyes work so much better underwater
to have seen what I have seen, see what I see
I pull up curds of wet earth and I dream
of riding all the deer into the woods,
of twisting all the boys’ hair into antlers,
which parts of each would be the best to eat