mother arms
Hi. I am Danica Spitfyer/Charlie Prince/Gianna! This is a Zine about suburbia.
This is about New Jersey. This is about mothering. This is about wanting to die. This is about Sylvia Plath wanting to die. This is about Anne Frank having her feelings invalidated. This is about Anne Frank thinking about sex. This is about wanting to suck the nutrients dry. This is about being gross and asking boys if they think you’re gross. This is about being a grimey boi and slimey grrrl. This is about Le Petit Prince. This is about dAdDy iSsuEs!1 1. This is about how you don’t know the rules. This about how you don’t want rules because you might be too scared to break them. This is about how you apologize for breaking rules. This is about making a name or two or more for yourself. This is about being so uncomfortable in your body you have to leave it behind. This is about growing and being a person and growing people and ideas inside of you on the far outskirts of the city in a place called suburbia in a state known as New Jersey.
I h8 New Jerz!!!11!1!!11!11! ☻
mother arms i bend down to touch my toes but end up ripping up grass, i like the dirt becoming my skin and i like that the green gives me color when i am so b l a c k a n d w h i t e b l e e d i n g t e l e v i s i o n suburban housewife in training flesh p o c k e t pouch to play with sitting on the couch and pressing my soft bean bag belly, ordering a teal refrigerator that so represents my personality, and tending to the victory garden in my room everyone is suckling from my b r e a s t s and i am trying to rip them off in a polite manner i offer them a cheese platter and fruit on a stick but they won’t take the b a i t they have to drain my face death yellow my tongue has cavities, dry as a sponge that longs for neglected dishes in a porcelain sink tinted p i n k and sizable chunks like toothpaste leftover, but it’s not toothpaste, it’s my fat mother’s arm and hammer, that i take behind closed doors slammed shut, ram against my skull so it rattles and i am brand new and ready to start the day smile, how are you, smile i am here to help you! at my expense i have so much to give! i pull stringy v e s s e l s and serve them, twirl them, eat your spaghetti or i will tell them, sorry, she can’t go out to play today and the children will hate you they’ll run across the street by the time you circle the dead end and i will laugh from the window
wiping my hands on an apron passed down generations and g i r l g e n e r a t i o n and family vacations to florida minivans and smoke stacks nuclear family neighboring a power plant living inside a plastic bottle rub it the right way it doesn’t make a difference my tall picket fence wasn’t meant to keep you out, but i don’t understand w h y you should want to be let in. ♥♡♥ ¡mija , mi hija! there are steve harvey stans they hold tight to his handlebar mustache and ask steve, what to do, what to do my husband left me five years ago, my feet are twisted and infested with buzzkilling fungi, and my daughter doesn’t love me she wouldn’t go out with the neighborhood boy i know he is no boy-next-door yo se, yo entiendo, pero ella habla le gusta su amiga, steve, comprendes? she doesn’t love me, steve through the television screen can you inject your transcendent wisdom, i can see how big your wisdom tooth is when you open your mouth, it’s huge i would say, like, eight saggy inches
steve, steve, steve, mine is still growing, i am going to kill myself if my baby girl is a lesbian, because god is a ladies man and a man’s bro, talk to him for me? i’ll get you into the fraternity party i’ll take scissors to my face and i am six separate women! one: my mother two: yr wife three: yr daughter four: a knife five: yr sister six: a bunion blister said, meant, accounted and apologized for napkins falling out of my mouth like soda crackers, fucking dry they tumble, i stick my fingers inside tugging, touching a new, familiar texture of wet and dry mutual i kept them inside so i can stay clean but my flesh liquidates like a store going out of business and my lips become yarn for gum disease my fingers are hell-frozen taper candles kindled by nothing, snuffed out by a sand-storm breeze what i am trying to sell is such dirty jersey uncouthness and writhing discomfort that a mad man would buy only to wipe his shoes with.
first, ass last i want to eat myself fingers first, ass last that is the set order, do not ask me to change it if i start there, with the thing that enables creation a beauty beyond flesh and bone and fat and goose pimples and butterfly heartbeats then i can destroy the only part of me worth salvaging, then the rest goes so much easier. and, if you paint your nails black, you cannot see the human-blush behind them you deny yourself invitable fallibility and the mercy that you might so desire self-forgiveness is overrated acidic sludge fills my lungs self-hate burning, simultaneously warming my corpse-in-the-works.
chckn sp fr th qbby no disciple of discipline teenage days torn by death and diagnosis last breath and first encounters tylenol from the medicine counter falls into the toilet fishing it out with my tongue my friends stood in line for pills i could not quite get behind ate solemnly with liberation in mind tear duct soup and soft dinner roll bread pin cushion comfort and needle heads here i am dancing in snowflaked, shredded, pieces so glad i am not a pisces but man was i close. reprised possession i want someone to walk up to me and sigh, god, you were really robbed then snatch my soul a trophy for the highest shelf put it right next to my moldy childhood dry carrot fiend, dust bunny funny how it holds more value where i cannot reach will it grow in interest? i think it may with inflation, who’s to say.
yeast sewer ground is where i sprung from shit-soil incubated my organs and mothered me single-handedly, accordingly, there was never a “father nature” a father figure i remember fleetingly i remember his cold body that felt like expired meat maggots and flies embracing him fervently, violent affection durating throughout an indifferent february fortnight painted with gaudy artistry that did not belong to god but man he was a man, won’t you let him cry out to you with dignity? he stayed in the minivan, i went into the church every week, confirmation, requirement taking an important phone call; taking the communion bread Body, body, body! (sorry, sorry, sorry) stained-glass coloring his moss face with pious dis-ease i want to take a dollar from the basket and give it to him he has no home here and neither to i Ich bin ein Brotchen.
at the mausoleum, it is midnight catholics are buried here devil worshippers wave, smiling in their cloaks suddenly we are pre-schoolers, making neighborhood friends short, i am
approaching them as thoreau would, i acquire a ladder, and consequently climb it. as if grabbing a t-shirt, i snatch my father from the dresser drawer they put him in i press him against the grass and recite breathily, while repulsion nukes my nose this is your body, which you have given up for me breadwinner for the family, five-seat dinner table cut down to four. and i taste your mercury blood when i look in the mirror you gave me eyes that demonstrate fatigue divine lips that always appear soft, swollen a jaw to clamp down on my own neck. i am your daughter, naturally. ♥♡♥
of a young girl o attic ghost, let me be frank i am writing about sex in my quiet way because it scares me you make me want to write nicely of Nice things and that scares me Too because there are holes in this box delivered to me in the delivery room which contains: niceties and girlhood packing peanuts sparkles and blood clumps cells, tissue and polite conversation contamination, dirty rags i can’t tell whether you’d like to keep me in here, coddle the cardboard or dump out the contents. ♥♡♥ dining womb it was nice meeting you i hope to get a seat in your dining room and i have so many questions because when someone speaks your name i wish i choked on my four-course umbilical cord, before i sucked the nutrients dry should we have known in the womb? actually, i googled your name i think it suits you well mine, by god’s grace! i am not gracious i show up to dine uninvited.
i have *to too two much love inside of me! And it hurts, baby, yeah!
allover i think about how we only get a certain number of days splicing, scratching, mangling, crossing off calendar cubes, i imagine maggots spooning themselves into the pockets of my cheeks like grains of rice i also think about how your benign jests turn the room into twinkling stars i think about how even the king could spare you a chuckle you, my love, are the bloodshot of my eye and the scab at my heart, which i keep Picking at, even though i am told not to or else risk fatal infection i am in awe of your tetanus rubber band mouth which stretches and snaps! snaps! stings mine own when anguish stains a room black and dashes watercolor allover white sheets.
♥♡♥
children’s book words! wow, you make me so powerful. i made him my little prince, i drew him a silly boy face, i made him drop to his knees in the desert i made him say grace with his rose girlfriend he howls at constellations which twinkle and direct him by my design. she wraps the crescent moon with the curl of her tongue like ice, and they slip on it, in a sick, cruel way, i lift them up a kindred force of cosmic radiation. ♥♡♥ my poor family i don’t know how y ou love or rather, how do you love how does one love? how to love? google search what is fucking? google search love for dummies? does anyone have love for a dummy like me? Love me! Love me! Love me! the most human cry i have ever heard valentine pink mouth full of moth balls that roll like Rrs when you talk and drip down your shirt like ice cream i have never seen you in the summertime you are not something i brought from the street while in wailing cat’s heat. ♥♡♥
strange dream i had a dream i held hands with someone and it seemed we were in love or something like that but when i woke up i felt empty like i was turned upside down and shaken til coins fell out of my ears and onto the ground so i picked them up, head-side facing and walked to a surprised machine to buy a ring so fragile i could bend it between my thumb and forefinger with my nail i mined the diamond nestled inside the metal claws of youth held it for a second, then swallowed it what was left i knotted around my front teeth it tasted like i bit down too hard like your blood was in my mouth it tasted like clink clank clink my mother’s wedding dress down the sink. 22 november if i put a record on would you dance with me? would you pretend it’s 1963? when i die would you cry for me like they did for kennedy? when i am in the ground will you be sure to see my favorite flower grows on top the body? i’ll decompose before he knows how i’d like to drop the needle.
nomenclaustrophobia to the person formally known as gianna to the person formerly known as gianna to the person for gianna to gianna the person for gianna for person i go by many names and bitch is one of them but i won’t turn around when you call i deny that satisfaction to all don’t take it personally yet i hope your eyelids glue themselves shut with mucusy tears matcha green and i hope to never see you on a movie screen rather wrapped up in a red carpet like a fruit roll up and rolled away, away, away you know, you have a radio heart, your mother says, i said i know, and it broadcasts wherever i go ba bump ba bump ba bump ba listen to those beats i slit my wrist because her pale paper mache has a shy mouth, but a song to sing taut bellies and sallow eyes i recognize you and you go by many names over the aerowaves underground scene punk rock polka straight-edge knife clean knuckle sounds kiss me music comes out.
the note on the floor they will find me, flowing, they will fill me, futilely, with sympathies, and insist that their slobbery kisses will be the last i have ever felt, and point to the milky saliva half-dried residue on my cheek as proof of their presence in my sphere i will laugh, the corpse will be still carpet wet, the blood my own. i tell you, this is the only way i see myself going. anywhere. the future? it does not house and clothe and feed me. i do not want charity, it is not a pride thing why should i profit off of poetry? i gouge my wrist with a dull spoon, writhing, i serve myself the gooey delicacy, and my lips are warm acrylic, non-toxic though quite salty, it’s flavor i have craved since birth, and tasted in short spurts, quiet bursts, biting and orgasmic gasps, exhilaration when i kill, and it spills over. know that this was promised to me know that this is paradise know that i could still see the sky with the sun in my eye, but i never wanted that when i lie in bed at night and my brain is a lava lamp
i shiver thinking about too-bright lights shy away from a sacred flight that over-excites, fear-fostering, festering propaganda, who penned the bible? who said i can’t take what was given to me? does god only grant himself and heaven to heaving pants of procreation? on the floor they will fuck me fucking. and they will fill me, fucking with vengeance, and insist that their slobbery kisses will be the last i will ever feel. point to the milky, curdling, half-dried cum on my cheek, proof of interference in my sphere. i will scream, the corpse will be still carpet wet, blood. can i still claim it? the blood? can i still kill it? the girl? but i never wanted that. she/they/i never loved. ♥♡♥
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