Previously: My prestigious literary novel.
“This book is absolutely searing.”
“This book is like being baptized in lightning and in blood.”
“If you pick this book up, it will never put you down. You will never be the same. The people who read this book have to change jobs and move to different towns, is how different they get. They become wizards.”
***
I am running, but I do not know what I am running from. The sound of my feet slapslapslapping against the pavement and my heart slapslapslapping against my ribs are my only friends. I have named them Jill and Katie, respectively.
***
[describes fireflies in a Georgia field for three and a half pages, interspersed with flashes from when my grandfather died in my arms after telling me I would never be good enough, that this womanbody, this girlflesh, would always be tender and useless and weak, but he was wrong, I am stronger than the earth’s heart]
***
The word of the body made flesh.
The word of the body made sacred.
The word of the body made profane, and therefore flesh again.
***
My Father Has Set My Eyebrows On Fire And That Is When I Realize I Am Going To Go To College
***
My [sacred/holy/profane] [thighs/cunt/sex] is like going to fuck-church
Brutal Intercourse With A Stranger Immediately After My Sister’s Funeral Because The Depths Of The Human Heart Are Unfathomable
***
A Brief Interlude With A Unique Male Lover Who Awoke Me To Myself, Then Serenely Drifted Out Of My Life
There is a [gibbering/slavering/monstrous/childlike] [demon/murderer/child/monster] in my blood that must be [exorcised/released/charmed/fed at regular two-hour intervals]
***
A reminder that nursing a child is no different from sex, using the words “fierce” and “primal” no less than three times.
“bitchmother”
***
[Agony/rage/fury] is tattooed on my [skin/eyelids/guts/titflesh]
“This relationship is like an abortion.” He spat the words out as if he hated them.
“You are not good enough to be my abortion,” I told him, unraveling each word out like a gift from the deepest mines of the earth. “An abortion is at least planned. You are hardly even my miscarriage.”
“How can you be so impossibly cruel,” he asked me, sliding to his knees.
“I have held a dead grandfather in my arms,” I answered him, and all the hosts of invisible murderers who have followed me with their loathly knives since my birth. “I have seen my own eyebrows turn into smoke. The kindness has been burned out of my bones, and all that is left is strength.”
Then we did it for like an hour. It was like going to fuck-church.
