alternative
facts
Kristy Bowen
ALTERNATIVE FACTS
Kristy Bowen
dancing girl press & studio, 2021 Kristy Bowen
Babies Living on Board Titanic! Imagine they float in phosphor. Tiny lights flickering beyond fingers. How pale the skin is without sun. How white their eyes. Their mother' glide from room to room in dresses made from cabin curtains. Chandelier crystals dangling from their ears. At 6, they sit down promptly for dinner while the babies swing in bassinets above the dance floor. All that capital and fine china, rattling in the cupboards, spilling out of steerage. The tilt and lean while the orchestra played hymns. The ocean floor that rose to meet them. How could they not be blind from all the shine? Below, in the cabins, the maids who survived are constantly changing sheets that grow thick with mold, but we tip them in canned peaches and the occasional cuttlefish. Send them back to huddle in the holds where even the gaslights won't reach. Each morning, they take the babies out onto the decks to watch the ships float like clouds one after another at the surface. Every once in a while they get swallowed by the sea that eats and churns, the cold hand that grips the ankle and pulls. The babies laugh and blink and suck the bottle dry.
Woman Bursts into Flame During Operation And who wouldn't burn under such prodding. The body split open like a fish in the sink. What started as a spark between the vertebrae swept through the spine and soon it was a total loss, nothing left but the teeth she came in with. This flesh that was not hers, but belonged to every hand that gripped the inside of her thighs. The heart that sizzled like a sirloin. She'd been practicing for months. Flames at the tips of her manicure that set fire to the curtains. Ashes in the trash where she burned the bed covers. Her husband's best suit. Soon, even the children with buckets of water to stop the damage. The rampage licking its way along the baseboards nightly while she slept. At night, every alarm going off in the house, while a trail of smoke drifted out thick between her lips as her husband snored beside Strange how he slept through anything, even the firemen who went in and out of her mouth nightly, the ladders they mounted to the windows, but no one climbed down.
Mini-Mermaid Found in Tuna Sandwich He'd say it began with a hum. Just a tiny tenor, a vibration inside the can. Noon, and the cabinets shook and the forks hummed like the rims of drinking glasses. Who knew a tiny thing could be so loud. So sad in her little bra made of scales. Every time he'd catch sight of a tail, she'd shimmy under an onion or an egg white and be gone. The voice itself, at turns terribly loud or barely a whisper, its own kind of terrible. She'd disappear, only to be reborn. He looked for her for weeks amidst the mayonaisse. Coaxed her with sea salt and tiny bits of kelp lifted from the sushi buffet. But still nothing until she was already in his mouth. Already damaged between his teeth. Sometimes, he swallowed her whole. Where at night, she'd swim the length of his body, from hold to hold. freeing each tiny creature from its watery cage. Cuttlefish, blue crab, mako shark. The lobster he ate on the coast. His lungs were riptide and tidal pool. Tiny bubbles flickering the surface of his heart. Where she'd hide in the ventricles and loosen every valve like a shell. He'd open his mouth and a sound like the sea would come out. She'd fall in love. Fold herself into bread for him every night.
Horse with Human Face Can Talk You can take the boy out of the horse, but not the horse out of the boy. Vocal chords twitch and hum and hello falls out. At first, the tongue was too thick, so we made a game of it, enunciating each consonant precisely through the teeth until he grew tired and tried to bite. Tail twitching and brown-eyed while the tv flickered in the barn all night. Every morning, he jumped the fence to the river. You can take a horse to water, but you can't make him think. He'd drink, but he sun always brought out too many flies. They'd crawl over his eyes and bite at his flanks every time it rained. The scientist, the lover, you'd run your hands over his main and carefully draw blood, but still he frightened too easily, All night, you'd recite Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers into the soft of his side and he'd nuzzle the carrot from your hand. The barn would creak and bats nest in the rafters while he slept. You'd both dream of endless field of DNA spiraling inside him. The alphabet he sang thick lipped and off key, but every last letter correct.
Aliens Abduct Cheerleaders By the time they've taken us, we've seen everything. Math books, bong water, Older men whose eyes wander the backs of our skirts. In a better town, we'd be starlets, swimming in pools of champagne, but here the lights blink on at 6 in the grocery store parking lot, then go black at 9. We swallow peanut butter sandwiches in the lunchroom, and die a little more each afternoon. At practice, the girl who throws up first wins a crown made of razor blades and percoset. Spend long afternoons in beige curtained rooms while the television feeds on our discontent and glows. Of course we'd be taken easily. Pretty much willingly. One by one lifted from the football field, the top of the pyramid. We were so clean on the inside they wondered if we were human at all. Our muscles wound tight as springs. They'd set us back down and we'd jump back up chanting the names of boys we'd forget soon after. Flashing our thighs and teeth at the crowd, who'd cheer, then rip us limb from limb.
Dick Cheney is A Robot Sometimes, things misfire. In the brain, in the woods in the trigger finger. In the 90's I was plum and sugar, so shiny with hope. I licked the back of stamps and sent letters into the universe in the form of poems. In the form of goblins, full of milk. Silk underwear lined with lace. So flush with democracy. After all, everything's a catastrophe when you're knee deep in machinery. Everything monstrous when you're a monster. America like a spider in its mechanical web while the markets grew fat and fell. Everything pink and luscious with all that funding. In Texas. the highways went nowhere, slick and bigger than they should be I counted out singles at the rest stop to buy a soda. The roads smooth, but the terrain rough and full of cows, lined in rows. All that Bush era capital falling like bricks from the overpass, so white in all that sun, so terrible in the sound it makes smashing all the cars one by one below.
Hilary Clinton Adopts Alien Baby We'd like to say we were surprised, but then the country wants a woman it can either fuck or be mothered by. Smothered and strangled with apron strings. In the West wing, baking cookies for men in an oven no one can find. The baby was blind, so we swaddled it in with gold coins and sirloin steaks. Rolled it across the White House lawn on occasion. Strolled through the Smithsonian, pointing out the space suits. The baby could cry and cough but it went blank in the eyes and would recite tax tables on command, Crawl up the walls at night and vomit in the rose garden. So sodden were the diapers, we couldn't stop from seeping. So human, we thought it was real. Crying and mewling. through the night. After all, no one knew what to do with a woman who could not quiet her child. Thought the women who came to sit and stare at it would surely want to take it home wrapped tight in in their sweaters and tucked beneath an arm.
How to Tell If You're Possessed Begin by checking the body for abnormalities. Left handedness, legarthy, locusts in the bloodstream. After all, the best possessions begin with the creeping of insects up the spine, into all the creaks and hollows Satan was announced by flies, but bees will do. Anything with six or more legs. A friend bought a Victorian wheelchair in Kentucky infested by spiders. Refused to bring it in the house. Its ghosts bend backwards and crawl up and down the stairs and it's all we can do not to want to join them. On an architecture tour in the south, the tour guide points to the ungodly blue of porch eaves. The wasps, they think it's sky, so won't build their nests. You should heck for birthmarks, bite marks, bed bugs. Check for blackberries, boredom, bad boyfriends. If you can float the witch, the bitch had it coming. By June, moths inhabit the stitches of even my most unnatural sweaters. Eat their way through faux cashmere and scratchy rayon, Everything I wear has the tiniest holes. I am always mistaking the ceiling for the sky.
Mermaid Cemetery Discovered First, we mistook it for a pile of trash at the bottom of the ocean, broken bottle and plastic ring tops, rusted hull of sunken ship. May refuse, maybe ruin. How it would occasionally surface, then sink to the bottom. How sailors claimed it sung to them on moonlit nights, their oars tangling in soaked paper bags and sea kelp. Always a woman's face beckoning beneath the slickly gleaming surface. We mistook it for and island but couldn't gain a food hold. Our boats sliced clean through to the other side. One day we rescued a woman, topless, tinsel in her hair, but below the knee, all fins and glisten. Hefted her over the side of the boat, but she was already dead. Her limbs leaden as we tossed her back in. There were so many, we kept pulling them in and tossing them back. Their throats jammed with plastic whistles and sodden cigarettes. They'd get tangled in the rocks, in our nets, then float soundless back out to sea.
I Was Big Foots Love Slave At first, we were happy in the woods. Pine sap and endless games of backgammon. How he'd roll me into his side while sleeping. The creep of moss across the floor over our bodies. The perks in dating a secretive man, the secrets hidden in plain sight. The dog that belonged to him,but didn't. The fog that gathered when we fucked, always on the floor. The women he loved before, all sirens and witches, and me, so human, So typical. So angry when mud stained the sheets and squirrels nested in the rafters. So happy to be adored, I'd wash the cave until my fingers bled. Squash the insects that crawled from his fur with my red heels, but still he'd drag the deer he'd hunted, bloody, back to our bed. Sometimes he'd hide in the closet to pretend he didn't exist. The dog would disappear for days.
Bat Child Found in Cave Of course, it was batshit and blind. It's tiny fingers scratching out nonsense on the rocks. We put it in a sweater but the sweater didn't fit. Sent it to school, where it'd sit on top the jungle gym and scream. Fed it bananas dipped in sugar and it only made it louder. So proud when it learned to read the labels on cereal boxes and speak in gutteral vowels. We sent it to camp, but the other children would cry when it spring from the rafters at every loud noise. Crying all night in the sleeping bag that rose and fell with its breath. It was so lonely it would follow us from room to room. Smash its toys in the backyard and bring dead things in the house. A poisoned mouse, a roadkill cat. Terrorized the neighbors by hanging in the trees outside their windows softly munching on mosquitoes. Still, it almost smelled like a real child when we'd pull it from the bath. Wrapped it carefully in towels and sing it to sleep.
Two Headed Mother and Her Two Headed Baby Buying enough barrettes was hard. All day long the cats dropped litters of kittens in the closets and the faucets ran dry. What we thought was novelty shined like the sharp edge of a scalpel, the surgeons table where we'd all undress and wait for hands. On our thighs, on our throats. The man in Augustus who offered us a soda for a peak beneath our skirt. Everything hurt in those days, my sister with her dead ear, the whirl of colors when I closed my eyes and lay down on the bed. Between the two of us, we could easily get out a sentence, but rarely did it include no. Something that almost split but didn't tingling in our spines. For the longest time, our mother called us different names, but now we answer to the same. To the drain of lights out on the street and the sequence of backseats. In trouble, they'd smirk from behind the drugstore counter. But double throated and swollen we'd hobble through the aisles with our heads high. The child inside, double tongued and thickening.
Farmer Shoots 23 Pound Grasshopper In the soybeans, you can see for miles. Piles of cow shit and leaning shacks. Night, the black that eats everything. Rusted combine, laundry line, How he could make his way to the tractor by touch alone. At first, he thought it was the irrigation machines, leggy on the horizon, but it moved the way all wounded things do. lurching toward the left. The heft of its body rolling into the rows. Thought it was just the Holsteins huddled together in the distance. The horses lined up along the fence but it moved the way all broken things do, sliding through the dark with a sigh. Could be a car, or a tree, or maybe a girl lying in the dirt. His wife rolling over in their bed. The neighbor swollen with beer. Could be his own fear glinting in the moon, but he could either kiss it or kill it and it wouldn't matter. It'd die anyway, rotting in the field.
Computer Virus Spreads to Humans No one knew the source of it, but the horses caught whiff of it first, like fire that spread down the canyon and into our beds. Not flame, but a fizz, like after lightning. Then a slow hiss like a soda bottle. I was kissing everyone in those days--bartenders and stock brokers, Their money-love collected in my mouth. Dripping out the corners. Spread by horny teenagers and housewives banging the tax man. We were all complicit. Contagious. Free falling along the freeways. Jacked in, jerking off to the women who took it, deep throated, with a smile. My blood was electric, prone to blackouts and bad reception. The men angry in their basements they'd go off like firecrackers in public places--the movie theatre, the mall. The bodies they left behind would line up and drop into a swimming pool full of ones and zeros. All of us complicit, floating the green glow.
Acknowledgements Poems in this series have appeared previously in Jet Fuel Review and Pretty Owl Poetry, and Pedestal Magazine.