Julia Kiernan

Luteal

4/2

I wave at the asshole returning from the void. “It was so open and lawless
there.” Yeah, buddy. I know all about it. Experimental animals test
themselves out in the pale vaginal laboratory. Browning fruits spit up the
world’s bile to feed hungry bipedal illnesses. When problems arise, the
janitor pretends to be retarded. And drone the women, women, women,
women, women.

Feelings takes the place of thoughts. Thoughts is pissing the bed, because
feelings held its hand in warm water. Thoughts is turning into seaweed
salad. Feelings feels like a new baby. The deathbed machine plummets,
as it ought, to the beginning of memory in order to reconcile something,
build a bridge, encourage unity, something like that. It can only travel
light years, so we’re still waiting for it to return.

In the cave lives a heaping woman. She stranded herself there some years
ago. She wears bells around her ankles and wrists. Her bells clamor when
she bounds up to the cave wall, her face clenching as if she’s going to
pass through it, but always, always, she stops just short. Under her
million roiling veils, she does have an interior. Somewhere. Somewhere,
somewhere. If you want it, you have to bring her three things:

  1. The transpurposed heart of a schizoid, which spent its warmer
    years in a body not desiring others. The schizoid must have been,
    in life, content or at least not tensed up all the time. Must have
    spoken a language with a high concentration of velar sounds or
    other similarly vibratory syllables. Wrapped in foil not plastic,
    unsalted.
  2. A postcard of a bucolic location.
  3. Orchids, indefinitely.