It was more than a blackout,
a swift dullness, as if I were gonna
faint when my legs buckled underneath
me and my ears spun out
with fussy noise that grew louder
as the view in front of my eyes,
hollowed out and bleeding like water,
like ripples of water cascading
before my hands held out. It was not
sleep. It was more than lethargy, or
oblivion. It was more than a stupor
or me swooning over love.
It was an immediate force. A kick
in my bones, as thick as lumber.
I went down like a dislodged
boulder, in the middle of
the wall. Five tons dislodging
more than sleep, more than slumber
more than temporary.
– Millicent Accardi…
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Cold crystals beautifully shaped and delicately formed into soft snow or the harsh ice on an inaccessible mountain. This is what the word crystal conjures up for me.
For others, it may be the cure of
crystal healing or the devil calling in piece of crystal meth, an expensive
cut-glass thing or just a pretty stone. I had even known a girl called Crystal,
whose beauty had the magic of a piece of crystal rock.
Berlin. November 9th 2014.
The bar was dimly lit. In fact, from the outside it barely looked open. There were no customers, not even a barman was visible. The only clue that it may be open was the flickering of candles burning on top of empty wine bottles, thick with teardrop wax.…
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Sprawled out on the table is everything I will need: two bipolar forceps, three ophthalmic hooks, multiple surgical punches, a medical stapler, surgical needles and thread, curved surgical scissors, surgical screws and screwdriver, and, of course, a phaco chopper. All my instruments are clean and pristine; I’m ready to begin.
My daughter stares up at me from the metal table and pulls at the belts around her wrists and ankles. When she fails to break loose, and gives up trying to move her stapled lips, a tear rolls down her cheek.
“No, my darling. Please do not cry,” I whisper as I cup her face with my shaking hands, “this is for the best. Well, I guess not yours, but it is in my best interest.”…
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I am not human, at least that’s what I’ve been told. I used to have much faith in humanity; I believed that one day our greed and selfishness would be drowned by compassion and happiness. However, this world has repaid my faith with misfortune. I have been coerced inside the confining walls of insanity and it appears that I will never be set free from this prison. For seven grueling months, I have been tortured through the means of electric shock and malnourishment. One specific method of torture consisted of myself being strapped in a metal chair. I would be forced to watch a series of incoherent video clips. These clips were comprised of suburban houses, smiling faces of families, dogs of all breeds (especially the Golden Retriever).…
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I hang around a lot of people who are older than me. I have been labeled as an “old soul” who is well beyond her years in wisdom, actions, and musical tastes. Nonetheless, I have also been the victim of tongue lashings by older women of color for the lack of activism and attention that Generation Y and Z pay to social injustices and current events. According to these “seasoned” women, we are more focused on “fake hair and popularity appearance” and “who’s fighting on Basketball Wives” and “the Snapchat filter.”
Obviously, these women have not cleaned
their bifocal contact lenses lately.
Young women of color are speaking up and out on injustices that happen every day, and it is not just with a social media filter. …
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I argued all afternoon today
with my Christian friend about The Rapture.
She sat with her infant on her lap
and gushed about being taken.
Taken where? Away and up.
Her hearty baby sucked on a spoon;
she said she knew it would happen soon.
I wondered why, then, I couldn’t come.
She told me because it’s in the Bible—
that God takes only faithful Christians,
their souls unsoiled, to live with Him.
She looked at the baby and echoed his babble.
I tried to imagine them vanishing before
my eyes—would they simply dematerialize,
or be lifted up by beams of light,
and carried off through spaceship doors?
Later, I saw the shadow of a plane—
like a whale’s enormous underbelly—
swiftly graze across a hilly
field, and a thought kept forming: a refrain—
that larger things above us
can only be seen through shadows,
left for us to decipher, below—
divinity found in hushes—
the rests between the notes—answers
we keep waiting for to land.…
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tell me about the first time
you asked a lover to help into a straight-jacket—
tell me if you let them pull your hair
or if you writhed like a garbage bag of birds.
i want to know all your favorite
spots on the body
to feel pain—
i like the teeth & how they ring
like a ceiling of bells when they’re hit.
i like knuckles because they trick me
into believing there are walls possible
in me. you once slipped out
of a giant’s mouth without him knowing
but came back to do it again & again.
teach me captivity.
teach me spectacle.
i want to draw a crowd.
i want to hide keys in my throat
& hold my breath
so long underwater that
the onlooker will know
i am part octopus.…
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