This is a Map that Can't Be ReadBy Chloe N. Clark
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There are many ways to kill a witch. Burning, drowning, hanging until dead. But the favorites of men have long been the most painful, place salt into her wounds, drive screws under her nails, rack her. It has long been known that witches can be killed more peacefully by driving a nail deep into a black walnut tree.
pain is closest to ecstasy when you remember that ecstasy
was once the word used for epileptic fits those saints in ecstatic praise were seeing visions Auras are associated with many types of illness. Migraines once brought hallucinations. A woman once declared that she lost words but gained the ability to see the souls of people. Aphasia is what we call the loss of words.
It is Rays of light coming off of them, is what she said she saw
Hell is referenced in various ways throughout the works of many authors. Often, Hell is a place that can’t be found by mortals. The devil, however, is easy to find. Everyone knows that devils walk crossroads, like bridges, and will take over your body if you ask kindly. Obsessed is the word for when you allow yourself to be taken by demons. Possessed is when the demons catch you off guard. Exorcism is when the demons get let out of your body. This is also known in some circles as releasement.
From every place that never existed 3000 maps so far
and I should have stopped listening but I just wanted him to stop talking and give me the maps greed for the unknown is something that can be tasted vanilla-pinetreesap-roastingbutternutsquash-adobopepperrubbedintotheskin-algaeaftertheneardrowningcoughedupontosand-lemonsburnt-salt-coffeegrounds-iron-copper-breathe in breathe out-thetasteofairafteryouweresavedandbeforeyoulostyourself A simple recipe for bread asks for water the temperature of fever blood, a spoonful of clover honey, and a good-sized pinch of yeast. Let this sit until the yeast blooms. Add three swirls of olive oil. Stir. Slowly stir in several cups of flour until you can stir no more. The dough should still stick to your skin like cotton candy does to wetted lips. Now add more flour and knead it in. Never punch the dough like you’re trying to break someone, but rather like you are just trying to make a point. Let rise for an hour or until it has doubled in bulk, a kitten belly swelled up with mother’s milk. Shape the dough into a loaf and make sure your oven is fire hot. Give the loaf three slashes with a knife, showing its readiness for sainthood. Place in oven and bake until the loaf is golden. To check if it is ready, knock twice on the bottom of the loaf. Never knock three times or something might come to your call. The bread is done when your knock sounds back to you showing the loaf to be as hollow as the earth.
The maps I stole from him You always knew that was coming
didn’t you that I was a thief A thief I left him sleeping took the maps and kept them close for years My love found one once and we placed them on our skin He for their beauty me for safe-keeping how many times will you be given the map out of the underworld Orpheus played music and even the stones wept. Eurydice has never forgiven him. Or, rather, she forgave him for looking back. She has never forgiven him for showing her that there was a way out. It is better to think one is trapped forever than to know that one simply cannot remember how to get out.
My love said that if I ever lost him we could meet beneath the branches of the dying
tree Run back to me run back to me run back to me The dead will be bound. The monsters will be bound. The spirits will be bound. There will be no one left to guide them out. That is the way it must be done.
My love sleeps somewhere and I sleep somewhere else
his body will turn soon into the forest and I will try to find his map in the bark of every tree and if ever you find me I will say that there is a map across my skin and that it leads nowhere and that does not mean nothing A Poem in Which God is Both a Metaphor and NotBy Chloe N. Clark
If I were to tell you what God told me
in a dream once, though I’m not religious and never have been, I’d tell you that God whispered so quiet that I couldn’t hear them, a kind of quiet like the night in the middle of the woods where all sounds are alive but nothing breaks through I kept trying to listen, to pin- point a single word, but words were distant and indistinct I stepped closer to God, stepped closer to the edge of understanding and I heard you singing once, when you didn’t think I was listening, thought I was tucked into sleep, and your voice wasn’t good but it didn’t matter because you sounded to me like all the sunlight in all the world had collected in our window just for that moment, just to let me wake up and hear you Midwestern NiceBy Chloe N. Clark
A boyfriend once told me to stop
apologizing, he said “no one is sorry about so many things” but I’m Midwestern and sorry aches under my skin I am sorry for that ant I stepped on with accidental malice and I am sorry to the people I have killed in videogames A boss once said, “I love you farmkids, you’ve got such work ethic.” But I wasn’t born on a farm I’m just Midwestern and I learned how to carry the weight of the world, in my arms, as a toddler, teetering on tiptoe, imagining that any moment might crash People come to my city and say, “everyone here is so nice,” and, yes, we’re Midwestern but that nice hides barbs, raspberry patch thorns we push into the “thank you” we say when someone doesn’t open a door But I’m Midwestern and after they’re gone, I’ll still whisper “I’m sorry,” the words dipping into echoes like shouts into abandoned barns they bounce and shake the frames Ars TechnoeticaBy Chloe N. Clark
My phone knows too much
about me: knows the things I say to people I love, knows how late I stay up playing Hanafuda and how often I start over because I’m losing, knows that I don’t get lost easily, knows that I keep photos of friends long after I no longer know what goes on in their lives. And my watch knows too much about me, too, it knows that I don’t sleep well, that I toss and turn, that I wake from dreams more often than I remember them. It even knows that I pace the apartment, back and forth, back and forth. I like doing the same things too much, and my computer knows that about me, knows that I get trapped in listening to the same sad song over and over, and the thing about sadness is that after awhile it just feels like everything else. And here’s something you don’t know about me: even as a child, I got confused by other children climbing up slides. The way they came down only to go back up. I never figured out why. Chloe N. Clark is the author of The Science of Unvanishing Objects, Your Strange Fortune, Under My Tongue (forthcoming), and Collective Gravities (forthcoming). She is co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph and can be found on Twitter: @PintsNCupcakes.
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