from HONEY MACHINE (Plath Centos)

 
 
 

The soul is a bride

 

I have fallen a long way.  My red and blue zeppelin drags itself up and over the harbor. What would the dark do without my naked mouth, red and awkward.  What to do with such beautiful blank, but kill it.  I have taken a pill to kill the mermaids and two legged dream girls.  I call them orphans, but as orphans, they are ill.  I do not flinch.

 

~

 

The tiny toy wife

 

Inside the church, he does not smile or smoke.  The bride flowers are full of holes. They trickle and stiffen in my hair. I love him like history, but I am only 30.  I carpenter a space for the things I am given, but the babies drop from a terrible altitude, arrive through the mail slot with a loving familiarity.

 

~

 

Nevertheless—

 

All night, I carpenter a space for the owl heads, the fox heads, the heads of dead rabbits.  I am so stupidly happy. I kill what I can, and confess everything.  My naked mouth red and awkward, my black on black. I break and the mouth breaks.  Burns blue and expels a freshness, a vacancy. I blow my tubes like a bad radio.  Shatterproof.  Proof.

 

~

 

HONEY MACHINE is a series of centos mixed and re-mixed  from Sylvia Plath’s Ariel:  the Restored Edition.
 
 
 

A writer and visual artist, Kristy Bowen is the author of several book, chapbook, and zine projects, including SALVAGE (Black Lawrence Press, 2016), GIRL SHOW (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), THE SHARED PROPERTIES OF WATER AND STARS (Noctuary Press, 2013), beautiful, sinister (Maverick Duck Press, 2013), and IN THE BIRD MUSEUM (Dusie Press, 2008). She lives in Chicago where she runs dancing girl press & studio, devoted to paper-oriented arts and publishing work by women writers/artists.