Grate

Page 1


Jeevika Verma and Jocelyn Beausire


Little books, things that are related or a big thing a children’s book or scenes from a play where the plot is indeterminate. Something from nothing, from the gap in the process when Jeevika got mugged and Jocelyn lost herself to the external and couldn’t get back in.

Jeevika is left justified + left illustrated Jocelyn is right justified + right illustrated


This little house doesn’t feel like my mother’s. Tongue instead a knot in the mind’s mouth. Sometimes I trouble the News with a strike of a pen that doesn’t know how to write. My paling shadow eats the dirt road leading me to the Sky.


Planes lie flexible matted with solid ground. My toes pick spots between grass stalks, wet mouths make a cup. Sucks my rough heels in she paces angrily. Gnawing the inside of skin. on sheening cheeks and consent to continue being but it went on and anyway it didn’t ask.


And I put a finger to my forehead to re-center, claiming that fuzzy feeling as the highest response. Psychedelic stone grounding my lap to the tarot Headlines. I will always remember that man who sulked on the bus then stole my life for balance. By bruise. Maybe he sheds a tear at night, showered in my identity. A trash life still on only one side, and not mine. Not mine?


It wasn’t the first time her sound came before her breath. Incomplete inhalations and teeth snapping on tongue, leaves applaud fleshily. I am distracted by the sound she makes when eating Licking of matter changing forms between tonsils, wet plentiful. An engine whine drone. A fat maple spits seeds on my stomach.


So when I put on my earmuffs on my way Back from Work, the curtains rise. Every home on every block kneeling bare at my soiled feet. Who are you. How did you get here. But the windows, closed, like a second eyelid. You know I see your cold, on me. And I don’t even care, because I have my earmuffs.


Five miles away two men languish on porch steps. The hours between them like glue strands, an attempt at narrowness. Four ears already full of wind and animal teeth Mouths always overflowing Discharge into dirt like a communion cup. After the lowness The heavy warmth I cannot hear them through the nails and her mouth.


I get here and wait. I kindle the books with homemade salt water and rake my wounds with unfinished sentences


Tapping on the hood of the car and A crawl. I am on leather in liquid a Wake. And she is driving. They are getting further quieter darker in the distance A sticky palm on my knee and a gravel-starred sky behind.


At once, there is a moon upon my shoulder, doing the work of looking It right in the eye. Where the snow forms every month, wishing to pale against its own glow, so it won’t hurt the ones it loves so. I feel myself bleed through my seat.



The grimacing sky eats out of her hand I lie back and watch it happen. What is a destination If the clouds are too loud to see it. I run around in my wet pants, striking the Dark as I please.



jocelynbeausire.com jeevikav.com


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.