Tiffany Promise blogs about life, literature, and hairless cats.

Misogynisitic Etymology (or More Trazedone, Please)

2/28/2015

I. Strumpet

There are bats in my belfry, she states too calmly, they told me so.

Sheer wings, cocktail stirrer bones—light as lint—her head’s

In the pantyhose aisle at Target. Not enough nylon to cover

All those spider veins, stretch marks, cottage cheese.

The shock machine ran out of shocks; ice picks are old-timey

But Earth keeps spinning on its wimpy axis

Turtle-backed, or flat as flat can be

Sun/Moon are cutthroat, shit-kicking competitors.

II. Jezebel

I never had a phantom limb, she pines, though I wish I had something to miss.

There’s onion meat under her nails; she’s been

Peeling again: little globes, big as worlds, with sexy slick exteriors

Shopping malls got nothing but bras with sequins on their straps; drats!

You can dig a hole to China

Or follow the bugs burrowing there

It’s real quiet in the center of the Earth

Your heartbeat echoes in your ears and you can taste the blood.

III. Harpy

Mom’d pick it out at rotting, she remembers, or just let it sink on in.

The lipstick on her tooth glints in satisfaction—always Wet N Wild,

Pocketed at Eckerd Drugs: windows usually boarded in hurricane season

Storms with lady-names are the most murderous, worse even than those named after saints.

It’s quiet after lights out

Our circadian rhythms are s’posed to match the sun’s

If you can’t sleep you can’t dream and if you can’t dream you're stuck in this

Scratchy sheet/plastic fork/piss stink clink; more Trazodone, please.

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Saint Magpie

2/3/2015

3 Comments

I ditched Hatred near the tracks in El Trasho. He wanted to spend one last night—swillin’ moonshine and smokin’ rollies—with those homespun Texas homebums before heading off to L.A. He’d tried to talk me into going with—his devil mouth extra slick—but I’d stuck my boots firmly in the dirt. C’mon Mags, he practically purred, I’ll take you to see X at The Roxy and to eat Oki-Dogs whenever you want. We can make out on that table where Darby Crash planned his suicide; it’ll be killer. But I was too busy to get caught up in Hatred’s Hollyweird Sid&Nancy fantasy. I was willing to hang with him a day or two, but really, being alone was my thing. I had a running game of hide-and-seek going on with myself and I wasn’t into being interrupted. I’d stashed a spare rib in a coffee can outside of Cleveland, stuffed my virginity deep in an underwear drawer at a Victoria’s Secret in Witchita, buried a couple of petal-shaped fingernails in a donut-shop dumpster near Gary. And that was only the beginning of it.

And, even though I’d have loved to lose a toe or two in the city of broken dreams, I figured it was highly unlikely that Hatred’d even make it there in the first place. He’d get off-track somewhere along the line, tempted by some blue-eyed baby punk with bad skin and a homemade anarchy tattoo whose boyfriend’s lip was in desperate need of a splittin’. I’d packed his bindle full of pb&j sammiches, condoms, and smokes before sending him on his way.

Losing was a solitary act, just how I figured religion was s’posed to be. I wore it like a crucifix, fucked it like a lover, used it to light candles, and altered my body in accommodation. I hoped that if I kept on practicing with the patience of a saint, then someday, maybe, it wouldn’t even smart.

I wrote odes and obituaries on hand-made maps; I made up dirges to the rhythm of Johnny Cash songs. It felt important to pay plenty of respect to all the things I’d lost, but I was also keen on keeping some kind of whereabouts-track. I had fantasies of myself as a fully-formed girl, retracing my tire-tracks, trunk full of forget-me-nots to sprinkle on my graves. I hoped that if I wished upon enough stars and eyelashes, the fairies might be nice enough to mark my leavings with seeds. I had my fingers crossed for weeping willows, though magnolia trees would do in a pinch.

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Misogynisitic Etymology (or More Trazedone, Please)

Saint Magpie

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