"Street Art 6" by Olivier Schopfer
The Dictionary of Barely Alive Beings
N.
Gunmetal lips and that cold tumor
Organ hands
She said how deep can I get
And I said bite me
Hand/thighs/two girls/three fingers/red polish
Her/drip down my throat/deep on/my legs around her/open/gape
mouth/how many fingers/deep sea/I wanted to be a swimmer
A bevy of silver stars/spit and something else on her mouth
L.
Lucy’s got her lipstick on again
Says jive me up a little
Cognac/a car with no roof/her green dress/strapless/open lips
bites on her shoulders/said they were skeeters/but the toothmarks are all wrong
O.
We are here to discuss
The bathtub slit and the dismemberment of my stomach
Fill my mouth with honey and tooth ache powder they say to soothe
My skin is a scarab and you rip the veil
I am put into a bathtub/I am put into a meat grinder
They take a razor and bathe in the bright worlds of my throat
What were once intestines are now flowers
Covered a rag with gasoline and lit me up like a lamp
I burned open the dawn-the day and then I mixed with gravel and smog
They used copper wires on my eyes
He bought me candy and said to be a good girl-happy day-good world
I opened my mouth and then swallowed a torn up rug and three bullets
I was hooked up
I was open legged and ready
They scooped my belly out like melon seeds and stuffed it with newspapers
They covered my stumps in white lace and sang
I gnawed on the roots and the places where fluoride didn’t leach
I said, let me go, I said where is Daddy, I said, I know how to make caramel
They cover my lips in fuses and say to blow up a casket they cover my hair in
Vaseline and set me on fire to see if it will still burn or if it just stings
BRYNNE REBELE-HENRY’s fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in such journals as The Volta, Revolver, Souvenir, Pine Hills Review, Open House, Powder Keg, Ping Pong, The Offending Adam, Dusie, Poetry Crush, So to Speak, Adroit, Denver Quarterly and Fiction International, among other publications. Her book Fleshgraphs is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2016. She was born in 1999 and currently lives in Richmond, Virginia.
OLIVIER SCHOPFER lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He likes to capture the moment in haiku and photography. His work has appeared in The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2014 as well as in numerous online and print journals. He also writes articles in French about etymology and everyday expressions: http://olivierschopferracontelesmots.blog.24heures.ch/
