Communiqué, Or Trying to Find the Right Words to Describe an Inflorescence in Fluorescence
To Corporal Corporeal, and to all those with a body and a name,
Reports have come in of a meadowlark in the throes of matricide in Massachusetts.
High up in the scarlet leaves, about to pass the knife through, the meadowlark takes a breath, looks at their murder-weapon-clutching wing fluttering above, suspended danger, thinking hardships of their birth.
A clutch of eggs, 5-6 in count, over half mother’s body mass.
No one tells baby all the things that came together to give them life, that even if one newspaper was reprinted, seven wouldn’t have eight nine.
So the knife has dropped, scouts report, stabbed down below, by near-fraying roots’ penumbra, taking place among cobalt and salt-gray autumn blooms of which a faint glow exudes— ~{ * }~
The blooms are no man’s land, so stray away, operatives. Peony peons are of no concern to us.
They’re a Groucho mustache on the real problem: punditocracy,
for who decided that pectorals are PPE?
Reminder: you are always naked to yourself.
Don’t be a patsy to bodily propaganda of the 22nd century.
There is no precursor for existence other than what you are is now.
better_off_spectral.txt
special permission is requested intimacy is requested flesh download and soft interface is requested cut flowers are requested definite heat of the morning sun is requested all of experiential life is insistently requested a “yes” in response is requested a “no” is not requested a “cancel” is far from requested I suggest in the meantime in this mean time between choice think what lies beneath each option how “yes” could represent dad in his forest green recliner mom on the new couch peeling mangos Walmart bag wet between her feet “no” being brothers glued to the tv how sister is out how she is always out and you the “cancel” a scar-legged gargoyle watching over the staircase in darkness nose dripping you wipe your face with your shirt a dark splotch womb to mucus the other day your nose bled for an hour you worried your mind was melting memories scarlet-soaked in Angel Soft toilet paper the dogs dying their ashes in tins that used to house air at nine you took a photograph of your face through a glass of water on the mahogany dining table mahjong tiles in the foreground you didn’t know what the symbols meant or what even creates meaning what makes you see two eyes in two circles and name the face you see Oswald a joke you keep to yourself but actually the joke is I can still see you through the glass half-full you never left the moment you never learned that choices are made for you sometimes, never mind, I say, as if I have one
Karla Myn Khine is a writer and poet from South Texas. A recent MFA graduate from San Francisco State University, she currently resides in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in ANMLY, The Pinch, Sho Poetry Journal, poets.org, Radar Poetry, and elsewhere. You can find her on X @bunrealism and check out her other writing at karlakhine.com. ╰(◡‿◡✿╰)
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