AnnMarie Eldon

Dry-substitute Derogatories

So it is a dayscape. You must decide. If you are to decide for dry you must identify yourself. Which side. For placenta or grouse-supper rituals. Otherwise slow soporifices. Marigold. Caraway. Poppyhead. Their succour strength undiminished by ground, by hard. There is a caul in the offing. Vacillating do the blubber vanes gather. They are known by humps. By what they contain and their pressure evidence. That the gather-reflex has predominated. They are steer differentiated. You must get up a war party store against the line decay. A smudge for every time the fingers have touched. In the shallow muds clarity is not a choice but a privilege. A silver spoon in the river mouth. Watch as it eases a passage out. You must intend also on direction. To sever your entire service-sense you call up the foam animals. They gather in storm circles. The clouds make séance. Then from the crisps they have come. From the scather banks. From easterlies which made even the tongue stick. The roof of the mouth was its best bet. Could not even whisper for alleviation. And swallow a pipe dream. But still the swim-legs come and all manner of relatéds. Counting them a chore unresisted. But resist you must. There is a line. The black line. The black line cuts through everything, everything delayed, especially spiral capable things, those which blossom, those which degenerate, those which point blame, those which honest with no context. It requires a taste steady for gore-gazes, those killer eyes seeking to core. However, it is you who has forgotten more sunsets than there was sky for. Though gut-sad it doesn't stop. Is strong in consistent. Here again the dermis-dependents. Watch for the hawk-carrier signs. The iceglint in the eye. This comes from compressed things which are neither side of the line. All nondamp. All reconsigned in a terrible hurry so that the final word can be gotten in. And this not like a living-harvest which needs chopping. Nor a gathering. Nothing No mucousy cover. No fungi outgrowths. No humus extra. So then to dry after all. It should be in blood but is in a slight tilt of the head. All wakes to the dread-levelling hint. And all shrivels before the consequentials. Despite light your look through the maul-slips. Not one bit that isn't written on the wall. Your call.

The Banish-Alternative to Witches

The witches are our ship. Its deck the sea. We lie upon a thin sheet, undulating with the waves, our knees bent into backs of knees where no anatomy names. Sail north against an east coast. Dare wind to drive the counterpane, tugged around chins, ears. We are warm in shared exhale only; the saltdamp searching, seeking between warp and weft, the crest and fall increasing. Seafetch ransacks all intimacies, skin in shiver spots; we tweak blankets to pretend the cold out. Whitecaps whisper in circles above their horizontaless conspiracy and in dreams even the surfzone freezes. Invent a net, contrapted to hitch up against prevailing ice. Ice forms upon its mosquito-surface. We must risk an arm above the bed to tackle a lone, dank haulribbon. Ease it over our numbheads. Uncanter indown within it. Block ice now, outbalancing the wire sprung rim, biting into mini-hinges. Snap it to susurround us. Hang on every indulge to fasten. Yet it bends with the weight of ice. Make the mordant bedding a slivering pine to balance on so that the psyche may recover. We are naked yet the surface solid. Use the soles to tread down any wave formations beneath us. The wiremesh bed husk turns a pale sycamore-cream, becomes bee-keeper gauze, the entire ship ensunned by protection. Ice on the outside lends heatsuck to bare goosedflesh. Pretend heat and the ship can sail on north, slicing ice flows, all mock-hull, flimsy wood and crushable. Turn. Turn the ship to metal. Turn the ship west across the arctic line through obstacles more terrible than diminutive iceneedles into every pore. Sailing steel needs soft. Pull hoods. Pull skirts. Pull sleeves. Pull wraps. All clothing nondescript flimsied atop the head, heads in a chorus. Knuckles masks. Peer out between vista makers. Ponder upon. Drop anchor. At random, dock. The witches little shrivelleds. Make drust. Make seed. Pay heed to blow the deck clean. It is drying in patches where the breath spots. Try stay as a concept. No hay as yet. Nor rock. But home anyway. Take stock.