“The cleaner’s duffel bag, clanking with the tools of vivisection
bottles of acid that chime together from the wind of
his chuckle,
a club, to bludgeon me with,

a spade to dig my grave”

Ah, how we’re defanging the power of our language.
Detoxifying words that once had punch, that left welts on our backs,
that crippled us as children and bullied us as teenagers and
made being a well-balanced adult a fucking challenge.

The poem is written in blood
a razor blade serves as a bookmark
pages are made of thousands of years of pressure
the cover is marble

But I ate him to spare him his agony. I wear his tanned skin

cuz there will come a time when I will vomit him back up, flesh and viscera,

to pack him back into his husk.

Whatever is at the other end has smelled us, I can tell. It’s coming. It knows here is a world fresh, unexploited, possibly delicious. It’s already in the nurse, her blood, her dreams. She’s probably gonna become my wife.

Here is where the arc of your life got unpredictable and risky, mistakes recorded by the hashmarks of a cutter’s wrist or the squint lines in your face as you would sight down the barrel.

Traces of gunpowder in the soft cradle in-between

Screenplay