Séance
So-and-so with your arms at your side — tiny bits of mercury in your mouth. true crime is never as disturbing as the podcast claims. so, someone doesn't get out alive; big deal. I have an app on my iPhone that alerts me when there's gunfire — West 4th and whatever - my stomach is empty so tell me more stories — catch you in lies like a flying fish who calls it quits halfway across the bay. You say you paced the George Washington Bridge contemplating suicide - oh bother — & a roll of the eyes — I wanted to read the obituaries and finally say I know that guy! — but you claim the cops stopped you. When I hit the water men circle me, my body becomes heavy, my body becomes weak - I hold my breath and kick my way to the shore — ran towards my towel where sunbathing women took drags off Parliaments and blew out the word whore — it held heavy in the air like a bloated nimbus cloud. Groups of girls gathered in the locker room and set sanitary napkins on fire — playing Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board - knees against chests, stretching out oversized t-shirts — three girls on either side — two fingers beneath the body, two fingers try to revive what is dead.
Herbivore Omnivore Vector
You want to set a date to visit Fossil Hall, but neither you nor I can keep a plan. I wait until you bathe, and your skin is raw and red to scratch "see t-rex" into the side of your lower back. Nothing is as fragile as this. The road we walk is made of used dental floss. Look, my gums are bleeding! And I swear you rinse your dick in the sink, but some things I don't want confirmed. After one-two-three-four beers you cradle my head in one hand and call my occipital condyle your favorite of all condyles. I touch the top of your head and I swear it is the spine of a stegosaurus. I write love notes to your fatty liver, you collect reference pain. Some days you show up with pastry, other days you come with clipped wings. In a photo on Instagram you are holding a cat’s cradle made with sweetbread and sausages - understand why I won't touch your hands.
River Horse
we text because i can't stand the sound of your slurred speech; "whadouwannfrome?" i don't answer, i email — lines from e.e.cummings; don’t cry...we are for each other — it doesn't matter if you write back — can you imagine — again — doing this again — up against the river horse — and you are telling me about danger? did you know they can't swim? did you know i was raised in a rip tide? i will time the current to the sound of the wind — i leave my shutters open — my door rattles and i hear the bell of St. Luke's off key on the hour. your voice sounds weak — as if someone has their foot on your throat for forty-nine years. it is easier to sleep listening to a priest preach to a flock of chickens then relax beside your sweat and chills and breath of mixed pills. i am the bell of St. Luke each night, every hour, up, waiting for the return of the noctambulist- smashing into my mother's vanity, wandering into the hallway, waking up my neighbors — turning doorknobs. i swim along the shore. i can make it to Washout Point. i will move into an abandoned beach house; but then you bring me bones of quail and frog. you boil them in my pot - scrub them with a scouring pad, let them rest until they have dried and i take a bottle of gin and wipe them off again. sometimes we behave as if delicacies are important — although i hear your phone buzz — although it's your ex again — although you have no discipline - a river horse — no matter how fierce — sincerely, cannot swim
Images and Texts by Abigail Frankfurt
Right now I am reading Koba The Dead; Laughter and the Twenty Million, by Martin Amis, and in and out of a worn copy of The Paris Review Compendium of Fiction, Poetry, Interviews, Essays, Art, and More Since 1953. What am I excited about? Creating more artwork as companions to my prose, ice coffee, and swimming in the over chlorinated city pool.
