Being Here, Right Now.

When I wake up, the future has failed and my tent is gone. So is the sky. It's not even white, it's just gone. I want to remember the future. I want to be there again. The sand has been replaced by paper - letters we wrote back and forth, notes, words, just like we've been discussing. And the pond, it's different now, a thick, fleshy crevice, pulsing and warm. I touch it and retract my hand and touch it again. This time, my hand stays. I feel so tender. I care for the pond, reading to it from the scattered correspondences. At night, I sleep beside it.

Maybe this is how the future failed. There's no room for attachment. It's too dry.

In some ways, I realize that this situation is not about where we should lay the blame. We are all crooked, here. We all failed in some ways. Still, I feel guilt in too many places, in too many ways. My heart beats too hard - it liquefies and I vomit it out. My ribs collapse.

During the day, I spend my time crawling through the papers, until I realize I don't actually have any limbs. So I writhe instead, digging deeper, surfacing for air, until I realize that I don't actually have a torso. So my head remains hidden beneath the surface and I think about the pond.

Eventually, my skull bursts open, like a seed, and vines grow from it. When they reach the surface, flowers bloom, unleashing hornets until the empty space where the sky had been is a gold, buzzing blanket. The hornets come down and suck nectar from the blossoms. Their mouths make noises. Together. They all rub their antennae with their spindly legs at the same time. The sounds are so loud. Or they would be, I think. I don't have ears anymore. They collect bits of paper, chew it and vomit it up to make nests. This continues for thousands of years until they uncover my head and become agitated. They sting me until my flesh swells. My toxified, inflamed neck skin puffs up, swells downward and becomes a body. This agitates the hornets even more. They attack my body like a wave. My chest bulges out, flopping into gross arms and raw legs. I stand up. Every piece of me is sore and damp, as if it has been gummed.

There are hornets' nests and vines everywhere. I'm surrounded by them. If only I had my machete. If I just had some fire. If only there was something I could do.

The problem now, with the future gone, is that there is no moment to be in. And I can think about you in the future. And I can think about you in the past. But, here, the only thing that's left is the paper. There are no clues. Even the ink has evaporated and it constantly rains down, staining everything. My skin is thick with pustules.

I go to see if the pond is still around. I want to feel it. I want my erupting fingers to knead its soft edges. When I get there, everything is different. I can't tell if the pond is made of water, now, or sand, or flesh, or if it's even there at all. It's always just out of my line of view and I can't tell if it keeps moving or if I keep standing still. I'm not certain about it anymore. I sit down to write a letter, but the hornets are too brutal and it's useless to get them to stop. I understand, though, what they're saying. The letters never really amounted to much, anyway. I pick a flower from a vine and chew on it, for as long as I can, until my jaw drops off.

One day, sometime, maybe, you wake up from a dream without really having it. For some reason, everything is changing color. Everything feels yellow. And black. Nothing tastes the same. Maybe your skin feels slightly tender. Maybe you have the cowboy hat. Or you don't. Maybe you make coffee. Or you eat the beans raw. And when you sit down to write a letter, the pen has gone dry. Only sand comes out. It's okay, though. I'm standing right behind you, if you'll just look.

Wishing, You Here?

You're right. When I wake up with the sound of an earthquake, a desert spreads around me to giant piles of boulders. There are strange plants everywhere because the scorched earth is a hairy body blooming in spring. There's no pond because the ground drinks its own sweat for breakfast. Tiny dry pebbles crunch beneath my feet. Somewhere down below bones grind up into glittery gravel, which eventually squeezes its way to the surface as gold specks. They're gold because the sun reflects off them. If you can find a dark place, which you won't, you'll see they are actually gray bits.

I pick up a hose and spray myself with scribbled clumps of paper. It puts a smile on my face to feel all those smeared animals parade on my skin. They dance in a big group on this red bruise at the bottom of my back, where my spine curves. It's from twisting underneath the mountain in a dream. Their feet hurt a little but it brings back a fond memory. I encourage the animals by singing them a song. The vibrations in my stomach tickle them frenzy.

Such a fond memory, folding shapes beneath the mountain. My feet pressed against its smooth boundary. Sand and dreams passed between us. We licked each other, just like the future. I was down to two cigarettes but I lit one anyway, in order to scribble all this down in my open wound. The mountain reached its hands behind its back and ripped open a packet of ink, then pulled me over and rubbed it into the bloody scrape. I had to laugh at the perfection.

The thing to be sorry for, standing now in the future, is not being in the moment but smelling it in my guts as they sigh out of my belly button. The animals are most excited by the grumbling. And I endure warm pain as only the past can paint it. Color me epic. Call me love, the vomit spewing out of my paper when I unfold the stinky piece I keep always in my underwear. Whenever it falls out, I trace my steps until I find it.

It's a small piece of paper with the word "Here" scrawled in pencil. Here, or, there it was, smeared in a puddle of sweat, blood and ink. I managed to shove it under my fingernails when I dragged myself out from under the mountain. I slept all day to let it dry, then scraped it out carefully with my teeth. I kept it in my mouth for a while, chewing on it, sometimes forgetting it was there, whispering little things about pianos and couches and jokes about dragons. I wanted to nest my head in its pocket again, to get so sweaty our bodies leak sulfur out of crevices far away. We said good-bye, blinking, bumping into each other with hugs and kisses. It was horrible. But I realize that now because I am happy. Which is so miserable.

Anyway. I smoke a cigarette. I collect heart shaped rocks and braid them into a headband. I don't have my red hat. Sometimes I don't wear it. Perhaps at these times I know you're in the woods, in your tent, being gnawed on. You wonder if there are bugs inside my veins like the ones crawling between your bones and what would look like skin if it wasn't infested. One day, these will all fuse together and you'll think someone must have sown skin to your insides while you slept. All the paper I sent you will be gone. The skin makers took it as a souvenir and left you with a bag of oranges and a leather holster for your machete. Plus, the skin, of course. You'll thank me then, and wonder if your kind thoughts make me vomit, wherever I am.


by Daiana Feuer

The Animals Are Scribbles

Later, it is the future. Also, I am dreaming. Or dead. Or maybe you're the one who's dreaming. Or it's all of those things all at once all of the time, and it never stops.

In the future, the pond has dried up. Strange plants are everywhere. My tent is shaped like a huge mouth, with teeth. When I walk in, it makes a sound like swallowing. When I walk out, it makes a noise like vomiting. The ground outside is made of sand - there are mountains everywhere. It all looks so scorched. In the future, the sun looks exactly like the moon.

You feel all of this happening inside of your veins, however many years in the past, as you get undressed to go swimming in the pond. As you take off your cowboy hat, my feet crunch sand beneath them, through your blood, down your arm. The landscape is dry all the way into your heart. You can't help it. This is the way the future works. I'm sorry.

My machete's wooden handle has rotted away. But the rough metal blade will do fine for digging. I want to excavate. There are bones down there, at the bottom of the hill, fossils, underneath all that dirt. Your bones, probably. Mine. Someone else, maybe. The remains of horned grazing mammals.

Bones are scarce. I examine every rock as if it could be your tibia. No fossils. Instead I find artifacts. I find paper with your handwriting. I find grass. I find thorns. I find rice.

After five days of digging I have found no bones. I feel so dry. My teeth grind together viciously. Every time I move it sounds like rocks.

At night, there are harsh winds that pull ghosts out of the dust. They get inside my skull. In my sinus cavity. I picture each one inside a coffin. At night, there really isn't a moon. That's what the future is like, probably.

The first thing I do when I wake up is spit out the ghosts that gathered in the night. They pour out of my throat and my nose and my eyes in hacking convulsions. They land on the paper with your handwriting and fill in the extra spaces. Dot the i's. They curl up in your whorls. They hide in the deep pockets of your penmanship and stop crying about how horrible being a ghost is, for a bit. They peer out at me, gleefully, when I read what you wrote, sometime, somewhere, whoever you are. Sometimes I feel like I know you.

In the future, all the animals are just scribbles. Letters that have been crossed out. You can barely see them. One day they gathered around the pit I was digging, made scratching noises at each other and wandered off into the sand. They seem so clean.

I keep digging. Although, we all know that when the future ends, I still won't find any bones. Fossilization is a complicated process, the conditions must be just right. There's nothing left. There are no bones for me to uncover. But that's okay. I don't need bones. Mine will do. What I really need is some skin.

As I fall asleep my tent flaps in the wind, sails, taking me further into the future. This is the future. Here is the pond. Your bones or my bones. Or some bones. Mammal bones. Fossils. Here are your veins. You feel an earthquake, or you think you do. Or you inflict one on me, accidentally. When you wake up from your dream, maybe, you lean over and puke into your hat until it is so full, filled to the brim. There are bugs everywhere outside. The sound of trees breaking. You're writing a letter. Your veins bulge, as if they're filled with hornets. You puke everything, until the earthquake passes. You touch your skin. You feel so dry and numb. Now think about that. That's what the future is like.

In the night, I wrap the paper around my bones. It feels enough like skin. It'll do. Thanks.

Fruit Tree Blossoms

Late morning, the sky is thick white. Can't look at it directly. Bugs and birds make tons of noise. I'm not wearing shoes. I tighten the string from my red cowboy hat, you know the one, around my jaw. That is the jaw, isn't it? Not my chin, not my neck either.

Friendship is nice, isn't it? Comforted by ink at an unknown distance. At the source, another pile of bones and skin hunches over a piece of paper and stares at you through the lines. A caged creature peering at you from inside your head.

Speaking of my head, there's a song in it. I got a song in my head. It's about trees falling. One tree falls against another tree. Two trees fall against a third. I split my thumb open trying to write the music. See? For a girl with so many thumbs in her songs, you'd think I could get my head to hit the strings right. Maybe I need a drum. Or a comb. My hair's an ocean.

The first time my mom saw someone die, his blood got all over her. She heard an explosion and ran to it. Inside this smoke filled little store a man she knew through her dad was lying on the floor. He sprayed blood at her as she pressed his chest. The killer watched for a few minutes undetected before leaving the store. She told the store man he'd be fine. He thanked her then died. She says not everyone smiles and cries on the same day.

These trees smell good. Trees are muscular flowers sort of. One day they'll die and become fruits. Sad. Doesn't that make you want to throw up and cry? Flowers turn to fruit and if not eaten when they're most juicy and beautiful, they shrivel up and die, get stepped on and covered with blood from someone's head hitting a rock when they slip and fall. Then flies come and eat the decay. The vomit and the fruit and the body die on top of each other, lovers poisoned by their most practical instincts: to love, to smell, to taste. Poetry everywhere vomits on itself. It's happening now. It's already happened. It's happening again. And here I am picking flowers because they're shaped and colorful. I pull their bodies apart with my curious fingers, delighted by their flesh as it dies in my hands.

The flower dies and I keep my bones inside me, all my organs, most of the skin. My eyeballs come out again and again, but there's no end in sight. Soak me pruney then squish me. Here I remain. If I can't feel the sun burning a hole in my shoulder, I will consider myself invisible. I'll swim back and forth in the pond, tumble down the hill. I'll set up blackberries so people fall. Romantic, isn't it? The ghost luring hunters and lovers with fruit and wormy things.

I hope you take this paper with you where you're going. Think about the flowers and realize you're not just killing animals, but you're walking into your future. There'll be flowers and berries and blood. If you find yourself dreaming. Think of hands. You can use them to rip things apart, but know that in order to take off clothes, something must remain underneath. This is the food for the flies, sliding down a muddy hill to the edge of a pond, where it gets shoved into the water by careless whispers and drunk sex. It sinks to the bottom, grass pokes holes through it where it lands then ties itself in a knot so that you're shoe-laced to its body. You'll be pulled apart, flower, caressed, smelled, and pressed.


by Daiana Feuer

Dead Majestic Mammals

On Friday, that same night, I had gone out into my garage, while I was dreaming, because my bones wanted to show me something. The centipedes had just hatched and the floor was covered with them. It was that time of year. I didn't notice them right away. I didn't know I was in my garage. My body had taken me there. The centipedes were rubbing their antennae over everything, even my feet, when they got close enough.

Inside the house, the faucets turned on simultaneously. Something dark came out of them, filled up the sinks, overflowed, and soaked into the carpet. Then, they turned off again.

I asked my bones what they wanted to show me. They took me over to my tent. I pulled it off the shelf. It felt warm and fleshy, like a torso. I called you three times and left messages. My bones suggested I take off my clothes because it was a warm night, with the centipedes hatching and all. I agreed. I undressed. The centipedes crawled into my abandoned wardrobe looking for food. I wrote you a note on the back of an old picture. I figured you must be asleep. Or I was.

My bones suggested I take off my skin because it was really so heavy. I agreed. I took my machete down from the shelf and sliced deeply down my scalp. It stung. I grabbed either side of the wound and pulled. There was a ripping sound and some weird, barely internal pain as my skin ripped away from my muscles and flopped to the floor. The centipedes scurried over it, covering it, so that it looked like it was shivering. I called you again and left a long complicated message. At the same time, the message was to me. I described the dream you were having.

I put my tent and machete in the back of my car. I thought about hunting. Dead majestic mammals.

My bones suggested I get rid of my muscles and veins and organs - I was dripping everywhere and the centipedes were roiling in my discarded liquids, gleeful and panicking. I agreed. My hands plucked pieces away from myself like ripe fruit and put them all in a box and mailed the whole soggy package to you.

At some point, somewhere, there was an earthquake, I agree with you on that point. I just don't know when or where or whether it was an actual event or something that we both manufactured so that we could react to something beyond our reach.

Later, I went inside. The centipedes followed me, fat from someone's skin, maybe mine. I asked my bones why the carpet was wet and dark. They told me to stop asking questions, maybe I should get rid of my brain, it was getting me into trouble. Too many questions. I agreed. I reached into my empty eye sockets - I don't understand where our eyes keep going - and yanked on the slimy dense meat inside. When I was done, I looked in the mirror. I didn't have anything left. Only bones. You look perfect, said my bones. I decided it was time to go hunting. I started to write you a note, but only got as far as the letter "I." That's when the earthquake happened.

At some point, later, while camping, there were so many splashes outside my tent.

My bony structure shivered in the cold night. You had sent me a package filled with pieces of paper that you had written on. I plastered them all over myself. They felt just like skin, but better.

O Mio Babbino Caro

I write the letter “I” on hotel stationery and consider sending that to you. Then I gaze over my right shoulder. Someone is looking at me. I say “I” but it sounds like “Hi.”

I smoke a cigarette.

I’ve never thrown out anything I’ve written on. I have stacks of paper and nowhere to put them. I hang them on thorns careful not to puncture any of the scratched out parts. My body fills with paper instead of rice and the heat from smoking lights me inside and I’m full of fire. I light another cigarette just to keep breathing so I can tell you about a dream you had.

Somewhere between the paper and rice there’s a blood stream. It carries dirt and mountains to the letter “I.” The landscape needs no description because it smells like my clothes. I take them off so as not to be distracted. I feed them to the past. I light another cigarette and touch the scratched out parts on my body from the inside. The scars are heart-shaped and eye-shaped and smooth, dry to the point of wetness. The mountains turn sideways and I crawl underneath to feel them. I twist around and notice the pebbles scraping me are a moist body. Sweat erupts out of my pores to slide against the pebbles. I go deeper. The space tightens. I begin to unravel into secrets, none of which are physical. I flick my cigarette. Ash falls on my arm. Those pores are electrified and glow. The fire on the inside bites its lip. The hunter, the moose, the buffalo, the pond and my red hat appear in a squishy way. These dance between me and the mountain before evaporating from the heat. I light another cigarette. My legs wrap around scratched out parts of stationery. I press against the mountain and opera happens. Is it my voice or the rocks or the blood? I don’t know. This is your dream. I’m just swimming in it. If you wanted to take back the heart, it’s on the way down. I arch my back. I open my mouth. I squeeze my hands. I breathe so slowly, everything gets closer, wetter. I notice my eyes are gone. The mountain’s got its fingers in what used to be my sockets. It reaches inside me and I explode.

Are those tears or blood or paper coming out of my face? They’re veins which are a lot like vines so you would probably chop them up with your machete. I don’t do that. I hop up and down, bodiless, the way a trampoline writhes. Vibrations send an earthquake through the pond and spray mud and dead animal dust all over your tent. You remember all the bodies in your sleep. You see a mountain in a blood stream and you don’t need to describe the landscape because you smell it.

It’s amazing the way scents vomit memories onto the present.




By Daiana Feuer