roses are cherries are apples are tongues are blood cells are missed calls are unread emails are planets are hairs are lips are rasberries are tomatoes are pants are shirts are shoes are cars are beats are meats are candys are kisses are missings are skys before snow are strawberries are skittles are roses are you are we all are
Being red Inspired by Durga Chew-Bose
There was a period when, with great certainty, my name felt red. Was red. The large E that I had learned to write with three separate lines—forming the tall back and flat sidewalk bottom in one liquid L before dashing off its upper limbs—glowed red on the white page. Its edges were the brightest, the most complex, lit and softly moving like the embers that outline letters when I read in the sun. Off the page, the E floated by like the red balloon in the French film we had on VHS. It smiled, tipped its broad-brimmed hat, waved goodbye, and went about its day, preoccupied with its busy schedule of signifying and sense-making. I began to imagine I looked like an E. E was my favorite letter. E was red. Red was my favorite color. Red was E. I didn’t have to think it; it was as obvious as the October leaves were red, as red as the “e” sound in the word leaf, as red as the day my mother tells me I was born. There is a certain smell, animal and secret, sweet and not unpleasant, the smell that you find on your fingers after wiggling loose a hidden canyon of crust inside the rim of your
ear, the smell that huddles quietly in the clothes that you wear so often that you forget to wash them, the smell of your own residue. You can only smell it if you hold your fingers up very closely to your nose, shove the sweat-stained baseball cap over your entire face, whiff deeply. It is a subtle smell; you do not smell it subtly. The sweet smell is yourself; it is the smell of E; the smell of red. You hide your pleasure for it. It smells like those years, when your name still felt red, and when, in an exercise of freedom and fashion, you wore a red backwards baseball hat to school every day, a parade of red exclamation points. Do you sleep in your hat? Are you a boy or a girl? Do you wish you were a boy? The flushed cheek, the shrug of a baggy t-shirt, the finger marking the page in a historical YA novel was you, shyly sliding down the slopes of serifs, imagining cars bursting into flame. On good days—the kind when you wake up with your feet hanging off the side of your bed, ready for the rest of your body to surface— your edges tingle like the outline of an E. You glow dimly as the day slips you into orbit, the surface of the year spreading below you like a map. On good days, between here and there, a shaft of winter sun wefts its way through buildings, painting the sidewalk. You cross the street diagonally, as if you’ve spotted a friend, then blindly tilt upwards, the private red of your interior filling you like hot tea, its unnameable expanse tripping you forward on your way.
roses roses are are far far more more red red than than her her lips lips red red
The
G A T H E RED
Story
This story is written around and through quotes that have words with RED in them from email exchanges over the past year and a half with the following women. MOLLY ROSE-WILLIAMS STEPH KLOCKENBRNK ELIZA BRILLIANT I will demarcate when a quote is written by or to one of the women their names appear above. *** The crops I was looking at were arranged in this circular, layeRED pattern almost like a cell or labyrinth with thin membranes between each crop. It was dusty and dry. We had driven to this place in a run down, dusty white Volvo; the back of which I had turned into a bed with a little twin mattress whose edges were being threatened by ropes, peanut butter jars, bags of granola, a first aid kit, and other this’ and thats’ that we had picked up along the way. We both are long, lean, and muscular, in body and spirit, but we fit well inside our small vehicular world. As we stared at these crops, he said to me,“i love [the way] you weave it all together so fluidly...fluently...influenza.... in any case, i do know what you mean, in all the ways you mentioned, and not to be so REDuctive, but i feel the same about the boy and the porch and there will be a whole sky soon for us to explore the cookies and dirt and stories.” I think neither of us were sure if the crops that we had happened upon in this Northern Californian coastal field were really growing in the present, or were plants transplanted from the future to reassure us that our house with the garden was waiting for us to surf time forward or back and move in.
[Standing there], it was so like nostalgic but also incREDbly normal. Like I was bursting with love for that house [that house from future or past, I am not sure still] and the year [or years?] of my life that happened inside it and all of the relationships and life lessons I have taken out of it while also feeling so incREDibly normal to be in it. Time travel was so common that year. Driving around the country, we would hop in and out of our white Volvo that stayed always the same (save for the changing levels of remaining peanut butter) while the world we were met with was constantly changing. “So weird to walk in our ghosts,” he said to me. I agreed and touched his shoulder, amazed that he too was walking on the threads of the future and past, balancing on the fickle tight rope of schizophrenic time. It amazed me that we could hold hands and walk side by side on that wire that I had often thought too thin to hold more than one. “The RED walls too bright like i can see it too.” I said to him. He nodded. *** He was like all RED and crazy when I first saw him and he was like Lena you got a cigarette… Long before the Volvo and these crops and this time[less] house, he reached his gamey arm out for the cigarette I held on the corner of Broadway and 23rd. it was like things coalesced and came together in this incREDibly visceral way, [in that moment]. He reached beyond the cigarette and lightly touched my wrist, as if getting a sense of my pulse, making sure I was alive to his standards. I was and so we went on together. With me, [y]ou earn your cREDibility by understanding and articulating views that span nature and culture, telescoping from geologic to human time scales. Studying the science of both body systems and Earth systems and their inherent interconnectedness is the foundation [of going on together]. He did [earn his credibility] and so we bought, packed, and left in the white Volvo. Inside that car, inside the yellow lines on the highways and interstates, inside the states we went in and out of, and inside this country, we found incredibly visceral integration.
In a Wal-Mart parking lot in one of the Carolina’s he said to me, “Once you get there, you reach that place of connection with the whole, but until you get there, you are kind of a buffeRED, isolated self, separate from the rest.” I think it was his way of saying thank you, for we had made a whole he could be part of. I think before he was scatteRED and follow[ed] different standards. We had left Montana the day before we found the layered crops. We picked up a woman hitchhiker a few hours into the drive. We had had wonderful sex at sunrise that morning, after a hawk had flown into the windshield. I had been in the process of naming all of him, from nail to eye and freckle to scar. “When you say calcaneus instead of heel bone, Monterey pine instead of tree, or RED-shouldered hawk instead of bird, specificity creates familiarity. It’s like learning someone’s name.” I said. Right then, the hawk came. Spooky no? Anyhow, we were so tired and content we decided to pick up this woman, if only to fill our satiated silence. “…truthfully we mostly dont have our own words and thoughts anyway, huh, have as in to possess as like in capitalism.. is the schizophrenic undermining the capitalistic desire to possess... but also it is true that mostly our thoughts are bits of regurgitated and reordeRED information we’ve been given and experiences we’ve had…” She said things like this for hours. We let her lonely words wash over us, tracing the contours of our clavicles and sliding down the smooth length of our sternums. I closed my eyes under the warm wash and slid away from the leather seat that held me. I’m now back in Kathmandu and missing the quiet of the mountains… Also funny story the night we stayed near Everest base camp we woke up to a group of Sherpas huddled around something. Before long we realized it was a dead yak. When we asked someone what happened he just held himself and shiveRED- a yak froze to death. Crazy! I thought they were made for this shit.
“wait but i just remembeRED…” He slipped down beside me, joined in the huddle. Us and the sherpas. I thought to myself, you have this incREDible body that moves and so many people don’t have that. He does. How did he find me here, in Kathmandu. The movement, the mostly eyes closed guided improvisation, is walking into the wilderness on the edges of my garden that is on the edge of the shaRED wilderness, the subterranean buzzing wild unkempt wilderness humanity shares. We went back to the Volvo, dropped our hitchhiker, MeREDith! [I love her but she’s crazy! What was her reason for not reading East of Eden?? We must change her mind], off in San Francisco. As she was leaving, she said, “I enteRED the lottery for Phish Dicks and won all three nights! Crazy but it is getting me so excited for that visit and I have some other things cooking in the works and it involves you yes u!!” We thought, Phish sounded lovely but we didn’t know if we wanted to necessarily be cooking in the works with her. We bid her adieu. As we got back in the car after looking at the crops and continued our Southern descent to Mexico, I noticed Meredith had left a book by Bryan Stevenson in the back seat. I flipped open a page and read aloud to him, “Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully consideRED that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractuRED by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shatteRED by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the basis for our common humanity, the basis for our shaRED search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shaRED vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion.” Anyway, [I] wanted to share because it was this incREDibly cool dream and you were there! I miss dancing with you!
a lost idea
RED AND WHY I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT Album Description: “In a primary color, Taylor Swift captures the essence of her fourth record: it represents her taste for vengeance, her hot-blooded romantic streak , and the neon lit pulse of a dance floor. The banjo pluck of the title track and acoustic ballad “All Too Well” will resonate with country fans, but glossy singles like “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “I Knew You Were Trouble” seem destined for a broader audience--one that’s as vivid as the title suggests” 1. OK, first of all this description is like a bad essay that refuses to make a point. If you’re actively rejecting your country routes, which FOR THE RECORD were faked, can’t you just be bold and go for it, rather than being like, “yeah look i’m changing BUT also I’m not changing, so you should still buy my CD bc all i care about is selling CDs.” actually i guess all she really cares about is selling “records” which just bums me out that she calls this album a record. 2. the things red represent to taylor are vengeance, hot blooded romance and the neon lit pulse of a dance floor? i’m sorry but that sounds (and looks) like the type of bad romance novel you can buy at king supers. like of ALL the things red could represent THAT IS WHAT THEY CHOOSE? it’s so annoying. what about satan? hell--O. 3. it really annoys me that taylor always wears fashion shorts.
4. I really can’t get into this, succinctly, but it is just SO problematic that this freakin huge popstar refuses to acknowledge or live by an intersectional form of feminism. like i can’t understand why she insists on publicly attacking women of color and then also claiming to be like the be all end all of feminism. and also like lady stop just singing about men, can you please like substantiate yourself outside of this roll of victim of men? can you write a song about female friendship, since APPARENTLY that is something that is so important to you? 5. reputation sounds so much like Lorde but Lorde is better and so really it just reeks of jack antanoff which is lame. 6. she marketed reputation on FED EX TRUCKS!?!?! that is just so lame. remember when beyonce dropped a COMPLETE VISUAL ALBUM WITH NO PRESS?! have com class taylor. 7. the outfits she wears to the met gala are always so safe and boring which is the biggest waste of time of all time. 8. she really needs to let go of the kanye thing, like tbh he did help her become famous bc at this point she uses that feud so desperately to promote her image in the media.
9. her hair is confusing 10. ughhhhh
the lynx
There was a Lynx who loved to play in the snow. She loved making fresh tracks and admiring her own paw prints. Her paws were very large, and she took pride in that. She liked when snow fell from tree branches for no obvious reason because it reminded her that the forest was also alive. She liked how the crystals fell and crowned her head and hung from her whiskers. She loved the way snow melted and then glimmered on her fur like sparkling eyeshadow. The lynx liked to travel through canyons and valleys. She preferred to have the mountains next to her on either side. They were loyal friends. When she traveled she would think about food, the snow bunny she ate the previous morning or what she planned to stalk and kill next. Sometimes she would sing. She liked to sing most when it was windy because she knew she could belt it out and no other creatures in the canyon would hear. Her voice was inconsistent. Sometimes she sounded like the wining cat she was. Other times she sang like a sweet dove. Her favorite song was named after flower petals. She thought it sounded sexy and groovy. She let her tail whip to it. The guitar riff reminded her of a giant butterfly spreading its wings from one mountain ridge to another. It was the type of song she thought she would like to dance to with someone she had a crush on and hoped the opportunity arose.
Sometimes when she traveled she thought of those who had her heart. She would begin to think about them without even noticing. The thoughts took form as deep thuds in the murky parts of her mind, like infrasonic sound. Her heart was with a raccoon, who lived mountain ranges, fields, forests and bodies of water away from her in a place called New York City. He feasted on trash, didn’t like the cold, and lived to chase rats. His fur was always covered in grease and wet from puddles, but she supposed all city animals were like that. As she considered his filth, she would look down at herself and see blood and mud stained over her coat. She would shrug. The raccoons tail had no stripes but his white eye brows were thick and bold and turned his eyes into two blackholes. His eyes pulled her with a force she could not explain. Her body would give in, and the blackness would absorb her. He lived so far away in the shadows of the city that he became just a story. A story she often thought about when she was alone. Her heart was also with a grey fox who loved the snow even more than she did. He drank the snow, ate the snow, inhaled it, even mixed it with his whiskey sometimes. He didn’t believe in horoscopes, but he believed he could read the snow and tell the future. He was scrawny and too long, but his thick coat and muscles hid that fact well. His eyes were chestnut brown, which was rare for a fox. They made his gaze look translucent, like you could see right through his skull. He was like a ghost. He followed the snow where ever it was deepest. Sometimes that was in the Lynx’s canyon, but other times it was further up north where the snow was like powdered fog. The grey fox smelled like the earth, like dirt that was warm from the animals that burrowed in it. The last time she had picked up his scent off the cold ground was five mornings ago, when she feasted on the leftovers of a raven he killed. She wondered if he had left it there for her… then quickly shook the thought out of her head and just ate.
The sky had been blue bird for three days and the stars shone like headlights for two night, no snow clouds to be seen. She knew he was gone and hoped it would stop snowing soon wherever he was. She wondered what he thought about when he got too cold. Maybe the steamy insides of a raven, maybe wild fires, maybe he just thought about his own shivering, maybe her canyon. She let her thoughts sync back up with her heart beat and turn into a slow beating inside of her. She focused on quickening her pace, and the snow in between her toes, feeling it build up until she wore snow slippers. She was almost running, and her gate was smooth. She knew her body and the patterns of the snow, she knew what it felt like to move with the canyon. Something golden flashed on her right side, like a yellow river sparkling in the sun. She slowed and let her belly rub against the snow. The river slowed too. They both stopped. She looked harder and realized she was looking into yellow eyes, a pink nose, and teeth just like hers. It was not water, it was another cat. She lifted her ears and licked her teeth, the other cat did the same. She whipped out her red tongue, and at the very same moment saw the same tongue waving back at her. She realized that somehow, like a reflection in water, she was staring at herself across the wind brushed snow. She crouched down and let her yellow eyes tie in a knot with her own eyes which stared back from the other side of the canyon. The lynx felt something tight between her neck and her chest, like she wanted to sing but couldn’t. It was something she had felt before, right before she was about to land a jump across boulders, kiss another, or hold her breath while crossing under a river. She watched herself across the canyon and felt thick bands of red, pink and orange, vibrate from between her shoulders like sound waves. They waved like ribbons through the air and penetrated the ground to either side of her. She must have caused an earth quake, but one so deep that it was impossible to feel. She imagined the colors escaping the ground and flooding the sky behind her.
Her body was still but she felt like she was rocking forward and back. She felt the impulse to leap, to run, to force all the air out of her in howls and cries. She was still though. She held her breath and held her stare with her own yellow eyes. She was frightened.
more like a “beats by dre” red
Safe Word It was Joelle’s idea to have a safe word. She chose “Red” after the code word in Fifty Shades of Grey. “I don’t get why we need one,” Simon said. “Just tell me to stop if you don’t like what I’m doing.” “But that’s like, less clear,” Joelle said. “Okay.” Neither of them ever used the safe word, though, because they really weren’t having kinky sex. Sometimes Joelle would tell Simon to choke her, and he would delicately place his hands around her neck. Once she asked him to pull her hair as hard as he could, but he didn’t want to hurt her. “But I want you to hurt me,” she said. “It turns me on.” “Babe, I can’t.” “Okay.” At brunch, Joelle complained about Simon to her work friends, fresh-out-of-college techies. They were like the friends from Sex and the City, Joelle thought, except lame. “I just want him, to like, consensually rape me, you know?” she explained, sucking down her third mimosa. “Um… no” Maddy laughed. “Dude,” Rachel chimed in. “He’s like perfect, and you’re upset that he doesn’t want to abuse you?” “It’s not abuse!” Joelle slammed down her drink. “Okay, you’re cut off.” Rachel clucked. Joelle hated everyone at that moment. She slipped away as soon as she could and ordered an Uber Pool. A red Honda Civic scooped her up on the corner of Park and East 26th street. The other passenger was skinny and tall with black hair and chalky skin. He wasn’t attractive in an obvious way, but something about his defined jaw line struck Joelle to the core. She wondered if he was a musician. Or maybe a filmmaker? She imagined climbing on top of him, losing herself to the cold touch of his spindly fingers, her nipples pebbling in his mouth. And then she noticed his eyes, black and glassy, looking right back at her.
“Are you checking me out?” he asked. There was something vaguely foreign in his lilt. “What?” Joelle started, her face flushing. “That’s a super weird thing to ask.” “I’m just messing around,” he smiled, white crooked teeth, apparently amused at her discomfort. “You’re not even my type,” she said, her heart pounding. “We’ll see.” “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” He looked at her, laughter in his eyes, and didn’t look away. Joelle held his gaze. She remembered hearing in high school that if you held eye contact with someone for over six seconds, you would end up either murdering them or having sex with them. This theory would turn out to be true for Joelle. Not that day, or even that week, but five months later at a sex party. “It’s you,” he would say, shortly before bending her over the bathroom sink. *** “It’s you,” someone says from behind her. Joelle turns around, mortified that she’s been spotted at a BDSM sex club. She’s here on her first assignment at her new job, having pitched the idea for an article covering “What Really Happens at a Sex Party.” She swivels around and immediately recognizes the guy from the Uber. He’s towering over her, lean muscles, his eyes sparkling like champagne. “I see you’re still blushing,” he says. “I’m here for work,” Joelle sputters. “Me too.” “Really?” “Ya, gotta make sure everyone’s abiding by the rules.” “You work here?” “Yeah I co-founded it with Betsy.” “Seriously? You’re James Grotto?” “Yeah but here people call me ‘Sir.’” A surge of heat shoots through Joelle’s body. “You’d like calling me Sir wouldn’t you?” Apparently he’s noticed her arousal.
“Um… I don’t know. No. I mean maybe. Anyway, I think it’s cool all the work you’ve done around consent,” Joelle spews, “Would it be possible for me to interview you for the article I’m writing. It’s for Glamour, the magazine? Have you heard of it? I think having your voice in there would really add to the whole thing.” He smiles at her and holds out his hand, “come with me.” Josh gives her a quick tour of the club and then sits her down on a couch in a crowded room. “So can I interview you?” Joelle asks. “Yes, but not tonight. Tomorrow over lunch.” “Well I just have a few pretty straightforward— James grabs Joelle’s face and kisses her, plunging his tongue deep inside her mouth. Her breath hitches and her pelvis inadvertently tilts towards him. He nibbles on her lips and holds her head in his big, leathery hands. She moans, feeling her body melt, jolts of arousal shooting through her core. James chuckles and releases his grip on Joelle. “Fuck James,” she says breathlessly. “There are people around.” “Joelle you’re very new to this scene, so you’re going to have to tell me exactly what you want.” “Yes sir,” she says mockingly. James’ expression darkens, but there’s still amusement in his eyes. “If you were mine,” he says, “I’d have to punish you for that sarcasm.” Heat rushes through her body. She can feel herself getting wet, aching, inching towards the brink of an orgasm. What the fuck? “I want that,” Joelle says without thinking. “Want what Joelle?” James says, looking directly into her eyes. “You’re going to have to be specific.” “I want…” her face flushes. James tilts her chin up so that she’s looking into his eyes. “Finish your sentence Joelle. If you want this to work, you’re going to have to be honest with me.” “I want you to punish me and to dominate me,” she spits out. “Good girl,” he says, planting a kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be gentle since this is all so new to you. From now on, the only words that are going to be coming out of your mouth are ‘yes sir’ or the club safe word. Understand?”
Joelle gapes up at him. How is it possible to be this turned on? He hasn’t even touched her yet for fuck sakes. And how does she feel so incredible woozy when she hasn’t even had anything to drink? “Answer me.” “Uh…yes sir.” “Good girl.” He says. “Go to that bathroom over there with the green door and take off all of your clothes. I’ll be there soon.” “But what if— “Talking back to me is just going to prolong your punishment. Now what do you say?” “Yes sir.” Pretty soon, Joelle is bent over the bathroom sink, exploding in orgasm. She’s never felt anything this intense before—a flood of sensation consuming her. She’s shaking uncontrollably, everything spasming, and she screams as the waves of pleasure wash over her. Everything else disappears. *** Joelle felt a strange sense of loss when the other passenger got out of the car. She could still smell his smoky-Old Spice aroma. What was it about him that made her heart quicken? As Joelle climbed the steps to her apartment, she prayed that Simon wouldn’t be home. The last thing she wanted right then was to deal with his overly positive banter. But before she even reached the top of the stairs, the door flung open. “Hey beautiful,” he said, pulling her in for a kiss. Joelle didn’t want to kiss him, but was completely unsure how to dodge his lips. And then, the word slipped out of her mouth.
“Red!”
red red/Submit adjective 1. of a color at the end of the spectrum next to orange and opposite violet, as of blood, fire, or rubies. “her red lips� synonyms: scarlet, vermilion, crimson, ruby, cherry, cerise, cardinal, carmine, wine, blood-red.
thank you to all the ladies who make our hearts glow red, or cheeks burn red, our blood run red