SONGS OF QUIET FRENZY

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SONGS OF QUIET FRENZY PROSE POEMS & PHOTOGRAPHS Paul Kinsman O.



PRELUDE / BULLET / PIGS / INCH / DANCE / LUCKY / LAKE / DAISIES / PEACHES


PRELUDE LISTEN: TODAY THERE IS an American fighting in Rojava PissPigGrandad the guy holds a rifle and puts theory into practice posts on Twitter today you can watch the battles live breaking alerts from Al Jazeera that the war is still real and that there's a live stream of the fighting in Mosul today there is a lake covered in dead geese birds killed in a different war a war against them fuck the world says that war chemicals in the water dead today marks the 36 th anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon MOTHER YOU HAD ME BUT I NEVER HAD YOU today I saw a video of veterans kneeling in front of tribal leaders begging for forgiveness and today when watching it I felt some sense of oneness with this country but only with its crimes and on a date I asked a girl DO YOU HATE AMERICA? and she said yes I hate America without hesitation and I asked the girl HAVE YOU EVER BURNED A FLAG? and she said no but I'm not opposed and I leaned back and smiled and she said oh what and I said no don't worry I hate America too today the MMA fighters elected to unionize they can fight in the cage now they fight back against the pigs today is so far from yesterday and this is a moment in amber this novel this book map text is a series of them today I knew what to call this, what I'm saying to you speaking all out of breath, these songs of quiet frenzy


PULSE DEMON 35 MM MARCH 2017


BULLET He was striking matches against his fly and this was when we were 14, this was when I was scared of fire, of matches, of the people who fucked with them...this was when I would walk around my room late at night naked in cold air in pale blue of moon walking from my bed with a stiff dick and knowing something in some distant somewhere about this being good, about this being right and natural and that it was supposed to be good but in those days in moonlight with school the next morning, back then I didn't touch myself, I didn't know how; the circuitry, hardwired nerves, they got no juice, got nothing, and I'd wake up hard inclined towards pleasure but the word orgasm had never left my lips nor entered ears and the given joy of bloodrush was still then an unkown, as of yet so unconceived, tremors still forming in the womb – those were the days then the night after day and he was sitting on a log in the woods legs splayed open with matchheads running down the metal curve of his and of his fly and small heads afire that he'd pinch with wet fingers and I watched, was watching quiet from a seat among leaves, his bag was at his side and match after match after which he bored and gestured to me and said “come here” and I did and looked into the bag as he pulled it open wide and– he took it out– a gun; I'd never seen a gun and it was dimmer, it did not glisten as I thought guns did; he held it in his hand and put his bag on his shoulder and we walked further through stream and bony oaktree with the unspoken knowledge that we were going to shoot this gun, the slight menace of knowing that it spoke, it shouted words that could kill, and we


wound up shooting at bottles we found and set up, passing the gun back and forth and shooting glass picked, the trash that lingered, until we found a pile of discarded things more so concentrated than typical of woodstrewn refuse and when we were looking there for bottles he who then had the gun said look and there was there a magazine with naked people on the cover naked women; and we flipped through it slowly and looked at it, the women with firm bodies somehow soft and the things people the things men would put inside of them, the women, they'd put bright colors inside and sometimes they would put their dicks in the women's mouths and sometimes inside where the colors would go and the faces the women made in the magazine these are not faces we've ever seen before not at home or school or church never seen and I felt strange in a way unknown to me and I walked up away from the pictures and moved towards trees further on and he behind me moved to catch up; we walked and left the magazine and stepped over bottles paying no mind to moss nor mud there; and then he said “hey”– I turned around and looked at him and he had the gun pointed at me; “show me”; “show me” he said, and I just looked at him and he fired the gun into a tree near and said gun again accusing said “I said show me” and there wasn't much of a look on his face– he looked as nothing– he walked to me and there wasn't much of a look on his face as I took down my pants and there wasn't much of a look on his face as he put his hand on me his arm angled down and there was nothing about fear in his eyes and head all as one as he knelt down and put his mouth on me and one hand gripped his father's gun which lay flat against the ground and one hand gripped the base of mine barrel in his mouth and I stood there frozen, bent though upright, stood there fixed in rigid pose and it went on on on and on something stirring in devilish ways and the dance until one trigger's pulled– dance of mouths open slight and heads moving as tide, moving as dance discovered, until a gun goes off, my bullet and his jaw– and I broke as we did bottles...and I shook as a bell for days

SLEEPER 35 MM MARCH 2017


W PATTERSON AVE 35 MM FEB. 2017


PIGS The buses are so full they cannot let people on after my stop, Ivan is on the bus holding the sign FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE MUSLIMS AND WE SAID NOT TODAY MOTHERFUCKER and we talk of Zack our old comrade the Quebecois born for Detroit– Ivan was with him the day before, Ivan in Detroit, occupied the airport, he's got guys up there just like him, he's in the IWW now– hates scabs and uses the word scabs more than anyone else I've ever met, reminds me I say “yeah I know a guy in the IWW, punched Alex Jones at the RNC while holding the red flag”– hearing the crowds around my voice, crowd on the bus and beyond; off the bus, walking; the steps to the statehouse are flooded, crowd's massive, you cannot can't just can't hear the microphones and there are signs upon signs upon signs a heart with a hammer and sickle in its center one says THIS SUCKS and this girl next to us her sign a swastika with negative sign superimposed– circle with red line– a little girl with gaps in her teeth girl has to be maybe five years old if that she asks “what does your sign mean?” and the holder says “this is a swastika do you know what that is” “no we haven't told her about that yet” the young girl's mother says, she the young one with glasses and a pink hat on, her mother picks her up as the crowd starts it moves, its massive, we have the numbers can take the streets and then some but there is hesitation; hundreds milling about on the sidewalk, Ivan screams WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS let's fucking go, we gonna do this or not?, and at last– High is a four lane two way at first the sidewalk is the main component people are walking along the sidewalk one lane


is full, and bike cops, some cruisers, a line of buses in the second lane blocking it SPREAD OUT boys with their hoods up and scarves and handkercheifs the bottom halves of their faces covered screaming GET OFF THE SIDEWALK the crowd is a mass runs like river slow and thick and it moves around buses around cars and some people honk and raise their fists or do peace signs and the mass is then a flood when moving towards the county building– people moving all across the four lanes and there in front of the county building someone plays a drum and Eric my Jerseyboy friend scales a lightpole and the girl with the anti-Nazi sign she gets on Ivan's shoulders and there we stay chants going along and then– again– it moves; we run Ivan and me and catch up to the socialists and Coka gives me a cigarette and the crowd is moving through all lanes and the cops are shooting loud ugly painful noises from their cars trying to cut people off and I cut through the path of a parked car and a cop car dragging my cigarette oh cool motherfucker me ha ha and the whole damn street is flooded NO WALL NO REGISTRY FUCK WHITE SUPREMACY and the black bloc-ers are running yelling STICK TOGETHER and there is a gap and FILL IT IN, GO and when we reach the intersection of State and High people sit down; this keeps up, it's gonna get hot– WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS! BLACK LIVES MATTER soon it's a human barricade and the cops form a line and row upon row of heads preceede that cop line and behind their line of pigs there is an alignment of flashing lights blue and red, screaming; behind our line hugging, greetings and recognition in the crowd– tension remains though soft for moments still– a guy screaming at us THESE ARE NOT YOUR STREETS I blow a raspberry– and then the message begins to spread, they're putting on their gas masks, a cop walks by as I stand on the corner having a cigarette I WOULD LEAVE IF I WAS YOU, Y'ALL'RE BOUT TO GET GASSED people have been draining off out away and now the occupation is simply a line through the north crosswalk on High– FISH IN A BARRELL, THIS GIVES ME THE HEEBIE JEEBIES and as soon as we leave people are maced; an image: a man with face covered raising a fist as he is coated in it doused with mace, an image: a man wearing a green keffiyeh treating a young girl, a Somali girl, high schooler wearing the hijab, the man is spraying her eyes with gentle bursts of water, “I know it hurts, I know, you gotta open your eyes for the water to do its work, you're gonna be okay, okay?” and the pigs walk off triumphant, we people scared and hurt while those motherfucking pig bastards walk, their lights flashing en route, racing off, grins shit and shaking heads while headed for the trough...


TO - GO 35 MM MARCH 2017


BLUE 35 MM FEB. 2017


INCH So this is how it happened basically some guy called Joey our boy this guy called Joey a faggot and Joey called him out on it because Joey is both a good guy and a gay man and it's not okay to call anyone that slurs so violent what they called folks dying of Sarcoma plagues so Joey called this guy out on it and this guy this straightedge fucking Nazi know what he did? he beat the shit out of Joey made him have to go get stitches and when Joey told us about him about this we all got pissed, we all got fucking pissed, some of us more serious about the idea of going and getting this guy than others but ultimately that was the idea on everyone's mind, we gonna go get this guy and make him bleed?, that was the thought, and Xavier was most serious about it, Xavier whose father used to fight MMA and who learned this trick from his father where you shave off your eyebrows before a fight to unnerve your opponent, Xavier did that, shaved off his eyebrows as soon as he heard because he knew that whether he had help or not he was going to track this fuck down and break his head and suck the blood from his beating heart– and Joey kept saying not to do it, skinheads got guns all unregistered but Xavier didn't give a shit and basically said “who's in and who's out?” and I said “I'm in” Kane said “I'm in” and Ameer said he's in, and so one night without telling Joey we all went out and got in Xavier's car beat up piece of shit from 89 with roof sagging low and broken brakes have to use the emergency and we drove off, “we got an address?” “yeah” and we drove up to this guy's house, easy to find because he threw parties big in the scene, Ameer waited in the car getaway man


and Kane & I put our hair up and went with Xavier kicked in the door and ran up and through the house to bedrooms searching and Kane yelled “got him” we came into this room where he was next to this girl with swastika tattoo on her breast and Xavier lunged threw a punch and drew blood immediately and the girl screamed and Kane spit in her face and said “not you yet” and the guy kicked Xavier in the face recoiled and I jumped on the guy and bit his ear and punched his cheek and it hurt my knuckles pushed them back into my hand individual digits jumped and the guy growled menace and we dragged him collectively out of the bed and the girl was still screaming and Kane kicked him in the balls to get him to stop squirming didn't stop squirming so we smashed his head against the wall and threw him down the stairs Xavier ran down after and dragged him by scruff of his neck out the door and tossed him in the grass and Kane and I ran up to him to kick while he's down but Xavier said “no” said to the guy “stand up, fight me” and the guy stood in his front yard bleeding holding bleeding ear growling yelling “you're fucking crazy you're fucking crazy call the fucking cops” and Xavier said “fight” and the guy quieted down for a moment and they circled each other we Kane and I watching Ameer looking too through car windows gas still going and the guy headbutted Xavier, red on forehead dirty white, Xavier in the rage of someone aware of the underlying justice of their cause because okay if you think it's a bad thing to beat the fuck out of some guy who called your friend a faggot and thinks we're subhuman because of who we are or who we associate with our friends being Muslim and or Desi and or gay and or bi and or trans and or black and or and or and or if you have a problem with fighting these fuckers feel free to fight Nazis with flowers but no– that's not how we do this– two of them circling each other again Xavier taken the headhit fully aware of why he's doing as he is, a pause contemplating burns of brain-boiled anger...Xavier waited second and then he tackled the guy, pins him down knees on the guy's arms sitting on him and the guy is just looking up at him eyes wide with hate and Xavier leans his arm back his hand up at his cheek and with his other hand he grips his fist, elbow jutting out, and he drives his elbow into this guy's nose and it breaks no fucking way it does not break it is definitely, totally entirely definitely broken and the guy starts coughing on his own blood immediately there's lot of it and he starts to pass out and Xavier slaps his cheek and spits in his face, hearing sirens off in the background we jump into the car and Ameer guns it back home to the outskirts of the city and Joey when he heard said “why, why did you do that?” upset that we made another bleed because Joey has a good heart but I agree with Xavier and he said, Xavier– “point is, you call someone a faggot, you deserve to get beaten up; you call one of my friends a faggot, you deserve to get beaten within an inch of your fucking life” words self assured and known, the cuts on his face unstitched and gleaming red


LEDGE / PREZ 35 MM MARCH 2017


DANCE It was my birthday, I was turning 12 when we lived in Tucson and my mother wanted us she had decided we are to go out drive late at night to what she called an Indian reservation– I learned in school that calling the people sometimes called Indians Indians is wrong not right kind of not good in a lot of ways because I had to do a book report about ghostcity blues about Anasazi people and one of my friends was part Navajo and he told me that people who lived here before we did are not all the same and calling them all the same sucks because it makes it impossible to remember the individual histories of these peoples and I understood that in some capacity because clearly the Anazasi and Navajo were not one and the same not at all– but my mom didn't give a fuck, we drove out to the Tohono O'odham Nation to give out Thanksgiving turkeys it was organized by this church group and I thought it was stupid and when we got there it was not good– there were lots of dead dogs– and the people looked sad– my mom told one of the church ladies that it was my birthday and she said “oh, it is nice that you are doing good works on your special day” and all I could think was “lady go fuck yourself these people don't want your shitty ass turkeys” because honestly they didn't– they didn't– most people there the poverty was so bad there were plenty of people we gave the turkeys to that just did not have ovens big enough for them and I thought then that that proved the futility of it but now– at present day, looking back in retrospect, I don't think it was worthless, I think it had an effect, and while it is not simple not a cut'n'dry it's still a utterly horrendous thing to do– to


drive out with the colonizer's cross and to give people symbols celebrating their eradication– the utter stupidity of my mother thought she was doing a good thing well no mom you were doing a really, really fucked up thing because it would have been one thing to give people food it would have been one thing to try and help various communities but to go specifically to that tribe and call it “Indian” land and to give “Indians” turkeys that they have little use for when turkeys are Thanksgiving food and Thanksgiving is celebratory of white people coming over and slaughtering native people– that's beyond the fucking pale– and later, sometime later that year, I remember watching something about Custer's Last Stand, called Last Stand like vain glory and I remember this image of a Lakota soldier shooting some American soldier in the head brains blown out and being both disturbed and not and also unbothered by the fact that it was one of the “good guys” as my father would say getting shot and now, years later, I read about the Lakota, the Arapaho, the Cheyenne, and when reading about Sitting Bull I read that he was shot and killed because it was feared he would influence the Ghost Dance movement which was the idea that particularly spiritual forms of native dance would bring about peace and as one source put it “make the white colonists leave” and when considering that I long for a world where the Ghost Dance was– where I and my people were by ghosts of mine and their's swept up and returned to Ireland, and where the British soldiers and the colonists in my own homeland were swept up by ghosts both their's and mine and returned to their's, and where all colonizers violent and all were returned to their homes and then I dream that those same ghosts would strike the hearts of the upper class landlords and bosses the government fucks hiding in armchairs and take them back down into the ground into some underworld and the more I look back, the more I consider it, the more I see the slaughter of Custer as valiant, as admirable, as glorious in a deep and true way that is not invalidated by the violence of its being alone– and the more I think the less I am angry with my mother, because she was doing something fucked up yes undoubtedly but still unaware of this– it is not my mother's fault that the nations preceeding America are as they are– and I like to– I prefer to think that if she knew, she wouldn't have taken the turkeys there– I long to think that she would, if she knew, she would join in the Ghost Dance


SNOWCAPPED 35 MM FEB. 2017


LUCKY “What was your first cigarette I mean first kind?” I ask him Zack my friend he is tripping, acid blood, and he thinks a moment and he says “mmm Lucky Strike” and I say “hey haha me too, true, got it from Sarah's brother got them in Prague, I didn't know how to use a lighter was on new year's when we were walking to snowcovered park from K's so Sarah she stopped me and turned and got up real close and lit my cigarette with the end of hers and I saw her her face aglow in orange lowlight”– and he said, “mm, sounds foxy” and I said “please do not use the word foxy” and he said “mine was in Strausbourg”– “where is that?”– “France”; he said someone asked him au francais “why are you here?” porquoi es-tu ici? “because somebody told me to be” quelqu'un m'a dit d'etre and I asked him “what did you learn?” and he said “how to say goodbye”; “did you buy them the Luckies?” I asked and he said “no Pierre bought them for me he spoke English and French and gave me cigarettes and beer I was just a teenager when I was there just 16, on the flight there before I met Pierre I couldn't sleep, 30 hours awake, no sleep, Pierre met me there and took me to dinner and then I slept for hours undisturbed by dreams, I had no dreams there– and when I was flying back it was the same except I was sat between two very very very very very fat men and then I thought how American tres americain but I remembered then now this is me again”; and then I with cigarette asked him, Zack, “what did you do there?” and he said “I knew this girl named Sarah and loved her very much but not in a way that I wanted to kiss her and then I met this girl named Mara in Paris she was an Aussie


and we met on a bus and we rode around Europe together and when we were in Venice she was back waiting for me in the hotel– we pooled our euros together so that we could buy a room and be alone together– she was back in the room waiting for me and I was out with my friends drunk on dago red and on the walk back to the hotel these Italian fucking pricks shouted at one of the girls in our group and then at one of the guys in our group and there were four of them and five of us and we got into a fight and we beat the living fucking shit out of them– and I remember how strange a feeling it was– I was so happy– I was thinking about Mara waiting for me in the bed ours for the night as I was kicking this Italian's ribs– and I thought about touching her while the Italian's ribs made this cracking sound”; and I with cigarette asked Zack at pause, “do you feel bad about hurting the Italian?” and he didn't say anything about it just jumped into saying “when she touched me it felt like magic” and “at holiday Thanksgiving they got all of us the Americans together to celebrate it back in Strausbourg and there were all these parrots in the house, there was hookah and booze and green but I mostly remember these parrots, saying avez-vous du feu? which is how the French ask if you've got a light or some shit means do you have fire”; “are you having hallucinations?” I with cigarette asked him and he said “no I'm just thinking”; “what are you thinking about?” and he said “on the train to Strausbourg after I visited Mara one time it was my number was almost up it was time to go back to the US and I just looked out the window at the French countryside and I thought about my old friends and whether or not they would remember me and just thought about who if anyone was waiting for me who's waiting on the other side and there was the feeling being alone in that train there going through all the world that perhaps there was no one waiting despite what I told myself there's no one waiting after all” and pause and “how to say goodbye: either au revoir or adieu– au revoir means something like see you later but adieu has with it this heavy finality and can be reserved for situations where you will likely not see the person you're saying bye to ever again and so it was with Mara girl with magic touch I didn't want to say it” and I said “what did you say to her?” and he said nothing and I said “Zack what did you say to her” and he said nothing just breathed in and out and looked at his hands and I said “Zack” and he didn't look at me just looked at trees and moonsky trip and I said “hey” and then said nothing because he would not speak, and I sat with him, imagining fractals he saw, imagining tainted elation, imagining what it was and who's waiting and thought to myself that until finally, quietly, he said, slowly, quietly, with a hollow weight to it, “adieu”


RESTRUNG 35 MM SEPT. 2016

SAD SAD SORRY SAD 35 MM JAN. 2017


LAKE We are at a church in the middle of nowhere and at the end of the chapel there's a wall of glass, just clear, crystaline glass that shows the gray of the sky outside and the gray the blue of the lake, and the cross hangs in front of it, behind it is the lake; it's January and the lake looks so cold and bleak, like you could swim into it and dive down and be swallowed whole by it the water; I'm confirming with the church even though my parents said I didn't have to but I feel like still I have to not because god is real necessarily and not because I'm afraid that if I don't I'll go to hell on the off chance god is real but I just feel like I should for some reason and my mentor is a homosexual lady in her late forties who's a spice addict, this was before they banned spice and all forms of synthetic marijuana and that was her drug of choice even though I didn't know about it until she disappeared to go to rehab, and she was a burner when she was my age she told me, as in she would burn herself with lighters as her own form of self mutilation because I'm 15 and a half and self harm is an inevitable reality at that age and because she saw the scratches I was too scared to make scars, and she and I are sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, looking out at this lake, out at gray water; the sun's setting over the water but the thing is it's not one of those sunsets that illuminates things, it's a sunset through thick clouds that are the sky, as in, there is no blue no hints of color nothing none only cloud and the particular kind of not that is that kind of sky; see I don't really give a damn if Jesus is real, that's not what it's about, because whether or not he was real these churches are pretty much here to


stay forever, and that doesn't matter to me anyway, the standing structures of a church, instead it's the story, that there was this guy who chose to die because of duty?, because of love?, because of something– good story but I guess what really matters to me is– in my school there's a quote on the wall from Ernest Hemingway, I read For Whom the Bell Tolls and didn't like it, too dry, but there's this quote on the wall where an interviewer asks him what do you mean by guts and Hemingway says I mean grace under pressure and that's it– that's what matters to me– grace, god or no god– unique feeling, sensation, the quality of the odd moment like looking at that lake, like seeing spring in backyards bloom, a moment like holding your newborn sister, or like being in a garden with a girl with golden hair who maybe is or once was a dancer, like seeing that girl dance the lead in Swan Lake, like crying because you know you are okay and that you're gonna be okay and the girl with golden hair who no longer dances she's gonna be okay too someday– there is something beyond and I wonder if my mentor feels– if she ever felt while lighting spice– or kissing someone– or touching them– ever imagining her reveling in something my mom calls the love of god– like her swimming with burned body and smokeladen lungs in a lake that can swallow you whole– that's all that really matters to me, looking out past that bonewhite cross...

OH 4 - S 35 MM MARCH 2017


DAISIES Do you ever watch the bomb go off like watch the videos one time I was stoned out of my mind had my feet up on the chair under me and I was sitting on my computer watching videos on youtube and I got stuck watching these clips of nuclear tests at bikini atoll set to ambient music these clips showing this fucking catastrophic explosion pillars of smoke dust water the united states military made a cloud right there and these clips theyre set to this beautiful music this very calming soothing stuff it sounds like what I always imagined heaven would sound like and thats playing in the background as you watch that bomb go off and its just in the ocean blowing up abandoned ships used in the last war or something but oh jesus christ the terror try watching its scary its deeply disturbing because its just its so big and I cant really describe how it made me feel then while I was watching it stoned but Ive watched it sober too and it still made me feel the same way still makes me feel the same way and its so fucking big like watching it you get this feeling like this is big this is a big fucking deal how did we do this how did we make this why did we do this how could we have possibly dropped this on people and I remember my dad gave me a copy of john herseys hiroshima which describes firsthand accounts of the immediate aftermath of the bomb and there are passages that described men whose eyes melted as they watched the explosion and children in the street who were vaporized not even bones left and women who months later gave birth to these sick deformed things that would have been babies and then theres this one thing I remember most vividly a man reaching out from


the rubble a priest reaching down to take his hand and in the priests grip the mans skin slides off of his body and oh my fucking god how how its just so fucking much its so much so big watch those videos and tell me how you feel my love tell me because right now its a lot and its just its so big and its on our hands and our flag did that our grandparents did that and the fire the water dust smoke its so so big its massive and have you ever seen those daisies that grow at fukushima two headed daisies from the radiation they scare me they smile terror at me those two heads fear just like the bomb and think of that think of them and think of hiroshima that massive and ungodly thing we planted and watered with fire oh god this is the face of it is evil its too much fire water smoke and flame its just so much and what flowers could possibly grow there its just so

EXPOSUR E BURNS 35 MM MARCH 2017


EXPIRED 35 MM MARCH 2017


PEACHES You feel 75 mph on the highway you feel it in your groin when the keys were taken from a father sleeping lightly from a father who's expressly, explicitly forbidden it (your touching the keys) and you feel it down there me I feel it behind my cock the space below my balls & you I imagine you feel it somewhere in the space between womb and entrance and this speed is godgiven because we want peaches and the world too wants us to have peaches and so in spring when the air tastes of orchards we you and I we will have them and we get there the peach farm hop out and we go in and walk and pick them from the branches with fingers most familiar in each other's mouths yours especially layered with the sweat of your grip skinsweet seeping out around the Firebird's wheel and we toss them the peaches just barely ripe into plastic bags and we carry them two apiece two bags apiece and we run back to the car and drive we drive and while you drive I eat one of the peaches and I make small noise the language of exclamation as the nectar runs sticky and bright from my mouth and I toss the pit out the window while you put on the punk music I hate but never criticize and the peachpit flies fall and hits black ground at an angle of 30 degrees and at a speed of 80 mph and we get back to your house, your dad is still asleep, we put them the keys back where they belong before the engine's even cool and we go to the kitchen, and you say start cutting the peaches and I do I make a small pile of the pits they look like little brains and I have the fruit in slices and you bring out a streamer and you put the peaches in there and you smash them over a bowl smash


them for their juice and it falls down into the bowl, keep doing that you say and I watch as you run out the back door of your house and hop the fence into your neighbor's yard, your red hair caught in delayed motion flying up in the air as it followed your body down, and you run and it follows behind you there too and you run to the neighbor's garden and pick lavender, handfuls of lavender, and you run back and to hop the fence you put the lavender in your mouth stems and purple btween your teeth and you come up in the back door breath rising and falling and by this time I have a full bowl of peach juice and you say okay and you pour the juice into a cup and you shave all the lavender from its stalk and put it in the juice swirl it around and then we seal the lid of the large cup and put it in the fridge, we shake it and put it in to cool, and hours later, after waiting, biding time, a woken father, we taste it – and the juice, it tastes stolen, it's an exciting sweet – and we look at each other and there are our grins mouths full of our labor and our 17 year old teeth and I look at you looking at me and I know that we love this, the peaches robbed of their knotted brains, the fruit stripped of its flesh, there is nothing sweeter known to the world– but we see it and know as we look eyes on eyes fully aware of the small secret fact shared only between irises, ours– the only thing sweeter being hot the other's blood

CHANDELIER 35 MM MARCH 2017


PINK 35 MM MARCH 2017


PATIO 35 MM MARCH 2017


FROM THE UPCOMING NOVEL FEVERISH 2017 PAUL KINSMAN O'NEILL ONEILL.264@OSU.EDU IG: PKON95



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