For Body in range (0, 1/0): chord invertebrate
A jar? beaker? endlessness but held
dashes drip
– _ – –
– – – mouth’s parachute cakes splattered mid-air
cr.u:.:. mbs preserve the oval emptiness via aesthetics
wasps grow on my feet nails stare, mirror in each sock-eye
organ, organ blood, instrument vapor, music
the symphony is a sac crawling over the fence, burgeoning into landscapes
static has assumed the motion of the hour
12 pm is no time for the body to become an invertebrate!
2 rabbit feet mopping wood tap nose smelling each hand, hair bendIng
down then coddling the thigh for blood again
cubs of flesh sprawl baby hamsters teeth nibbling at all knowledge
12 pm— and the egg light is a participant
it eats the body; then spells shape
to the naked human eye, nothing even occurred
no motion bothered the distilled accuracy of space, its ocular constants
the body is now black static
dashes barking on a microphone –: –:: –::: microphone in the gutter skin folding through
transparent diodes
the veil of life is sap; suck it into each nostril—
Now demand a retake
blink, blink
a disc, a rod, the motionless eye blue, blue uneven room slacking cheek,
tent under thwarted noon
Eat my mouth, and I will yours
space is now a ball lucid, dreamlike purple in the curtain of this stomach
when the body becomes rain in space velocities at angles vectors spewing out of
control, not even air possesses any posture
everything is but this— me me me murdering space thin lines of blood
eggplant plasma of the universe mid-brain
line after line point after bright hole shape, shape
dandelions of brown warts walk out split into oak blinds
organs in the fist, organs in the fist
and the body assumes pure music no note, only current
the premature baby of some incongruent symphony
<<<backwards{{{{{{ }}}}} forwards>>>
blind, blind static mad ball unchained in the (w)hole
Fractured bones perform an unusual dance
Vectors
From the taped, square mouth
Of the window, bleeding black lines.
Stillness is the PH value of a colour
Rinsing the insides and outside
Of this Mollusc-existence. Black
Is decipherable beside the bland, cheese arm
Silking along the phone light—temperature
Like the symptoms of entire seasons
On skin, black in the diffracted formation
Of everything—objects cleaved and misshapen,
Assuming new identities. The room is never
The same. Each second—a birth, and a miscarriage.
Possibilities porcupine along the
Cheek’s slant. In the receding light, the body
Too is pulled and pulled; one could imagine
Water threads and a large tongue between levers
Knitting the system anew. The system
Is weight. Leg echoes above leg.
Hing dissolves in cotton and grants flatulence
Tiny molecular deaths. Blood droplets and weak air
Align inside the asymmetric chandelier
Of breast branches and the ears pulsate—
Tinges of ache.
What is “ache?”
If some unknown entity, unknown to the experience
Of ache presents itself;
How would we define ache?—
Gravity curdling all vectors into a knot
Blue Lip-Wedge
What leaves the gates of mouthbut love, intense love?
Life slips into the lopsided jaw
bunches into a knot
wails for hours
then lies still
Torrents, sickness, moss
decorated calcium prunes
The mouth, dark and muddy,
slides into a dream
absolute light, absolute night
an all-consuming stasis
What leaves this dream, this nightmarish reverie but life?
Life pale as the blue bird
that only wishes to embrace the empty sky with its empty wings
Fatal Lineage
(i) The abyss was found by the first death. She roamed the planet, hungry for life, and
eventually, unable to kill anything, killed herself.
(ii) The womb was found by the second death. Hers was a strand of intimacy knit into the
umbilical. She said as long as you don’t chop the wire blob, I will be, and you too
shall roam endlessly. They chopped it; they always do.
(iii) The skin was polished and forged by the third death. She had been driven mad by
hunger, so she clutched to the insides of all things, refusing to leave.
Pestilent leech-gnome of beauty
(iv) The zero death laughs. All it does is laugh. No one knows whether it is due to joy or
madness, but the 0 death laughs. She says she’ll kill anything for nothing. Hers— an
aimlessness as old as the sky.
(v) The living death is a small sparrow. It hides in plain sight. It flits from point to point
to point to point
A B C R H A B N N N N A C F A
It understands as long as there is beauty, everything can be exploded
without killing.
(vi) The final death is, of course, formless. It lies in God’s thighs. It cries and dances. Its
joy is most inexplicable. Its sorrow is the first of many. It says it does not understand
anything and doesn’t know why God won’t let it learn the missing sentences.
Elevation
What brightened stem binds this universe?—At once,the mouth is a beaker and its lonely submerged eye.
The knot is fraught, hair spasms, electric symphonies;
this water, in cheeks, is blind.
Blood erases the ears and the cold evening swims
and blinks between the two pork thighs.
Small sweaters of days crawl into arms;
the needle is the mouth and the mouth is the arm.
The scent of lucidity is its fatal unity.
All is but a plain moth and its washed burrow of surf light.
The two ears bend and twitch, pickle and smudge;
each frequency is gnawed at in the bone-freckled light.
And we are to assume, that again, and again,
something is holding the universe upright.
For how else would we elongate; the body’s uprising
will swallow all the buttons of might.
Seconds burst into seconds, the blood eye
is drawing some incomprehensible bone.
Its music is a moaning scratch;
now we must sleep in it again,
Molasses-slob-naked body, RGB wire knees,
sulphur light still packed in the blank mouth.
What unknown thread holds the universe
from one hole to another? All one needs
Is a small cup from those vanilla ice cream cans
and suddenly, another sound may arise.
The ear bloats and one may rinse one’s paws;
find just one more pebble that
May route the body into that un-imagined light.
Aakriti Kuntal is a poet, writer and visual artist whose work has been published in The Night Heron Barks, Silver Birch Press, Selcouth Station, and Poetry at Sangam among others. She was awarded the Reuel International Prize 2017, shortlisted for the RL Poetry Award 2018 and nominated for the Best of the Net. Twitter: @AakritiKuntal
Layout and page design: robert frede kenter.
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