She says: Try me. Watch me blink my eyes and you can call it kicking. You can call me a crazy bitch, just like that.
III.
There goes the Dollar Sock Man and his wheelie cart down Western Ave. He’s been there since 1991. He holds a sign: One sock. One dollar. And he means it, but no one buys him.
land of unshaven, unruly beards (from J.A. Tyler)
This is the land of unshaven, unruly beards. This is the land where unshaven, unruly beards belong to the men who rule the land. And although their beards are so very long, extending — dragging — along the dirt, these men are not vicious.
At times, the men are unorthodox, they are illogical, they act more out of intuition than knowledge or rationality. So this is where all the computations and expectations prove themselves wrong.
Men, holed up together, are not savages. Nor will they on their own volition create empires.
When decisions need to be made — which man will receive pleasure from which prisoner, where the babies will work, who gets how much of the earnings, which child to eat, etc. — it is not like Ancient Greece. The men do not congregate in halls or squares to discuss. They do not ration their way into equality, or even anything close to equality.
But this is not Ancient Rome either. There are no gladiating wars against beasts of various sizes.
But this is not Middle Ages either. There is no sparring or jousting, no saving of damsels in distress.
But this is not Moaist China. There is no dictator.
But this is not United States. There is no guise of democracy.
But this is not Sweden or Russia. There is no Socialism.
This land of unshaven, unruly beards is unlike any other land. It is unlike any other time. Here, the men drink milk from each other. They drink off each other and live off each other. Like children, like babies, they suckle and they gurgle and they spittle and then they reproduce more of the same.
These men are something like vampires, only they are much better. They are improved. They don’t drink blood to survive: they simply suckle. They don’t hide: they have their own land. They don’t worry about extinction: because they drink only milk from each other’s teats, by the time it is all digested, they shit out babies. One a week.
Sometimes, they are malformed. Sometimes, they emerge unable to speak. Sometimes, the shit will not wash away. These are the ones they eat.
But only to ensure the strength of their teeth.
But sometimes simply because they feel like it.
It is, after all, their child. They can do with it what they want, if only because they know another will be born with the next bowel movement.
At first, it seemed unnatural. Then, they got used to it. Now, they wonder what women complain about and what takes them so long to grow a baby. But they don’t often think about it, if only because their memory of women is several generations removed. They are more mythical than vampires to these men of the land of unshaven, unruly beards.
Although there is no government in the land of unshaven, unruly beards, there is no war. There is no fighting. Although there are no town meetings, decisions are made and respected. Although it is not logic moving action, there is order.
These men and their unshaven, unruly beards, they live baking in the sun, unashamed.
language of the blood of Jesus (from Kelcey Parker)
The blood of Jesus is spoken here. Look up: up is liquid amber silhouetted in sunlight; up is a monkey ball turning sweet green to brown, hanging like an ornament set to go on holiday, to let go. Let go.
Where is the blood of Jesus?
She cannot speak blood.
But here, on a backstreet surrounded by boarded doors and windows, the very language of the blood of Jesus. Here, the language of blood trickles out of illiterate mouths, mouths filled with double negatives and improper prepositions, split infinitives and bilingual tongues. Blood is poor, abandoned, downcast eyes. Its language is can be no better.
When she goes to church, she cannot take the blood of Jesus into her mouth, not when she knows what lives there. But she cannot let the others know the devil lives inside her.
She does not pretend to take the blood of Jesus into her mouth.
She sees others step up to the floor; their mouths are jibber-jabber. They call it the language of the devil. She watches the devil be vanquished.
When they speak again, their voices are Cool-aid: sugary, powdery, artificial. When they speak again, her tongue swells for more water. When they speak again, she is thirsty. She sucks on her front teeth.
They do not speak the language of the devil.
The devil has no language. The devil is silence.
Outside, the church is unassuming. Outside is technicolor.
She is a woman without a name. Once, she remembers she had a name. It has been a long time since she has heard it, used it, thought of it as her own.
The others call her something, but that something varies from day to day.
Her husband calls her something; her children do as well.
She answers to anything.
She answers by nodding or blinking. She makes hand gestures. There is no order to her movements. Some days, a single finger raised to the sky can mean breakfast. Other days, it can mean tired. Other days still, it can mean circular building or car or beautiful.
Her silence is not a protest. It is not a sacrifice. It is something she simply did one day because she could no longer speak the language of the blood of Jesus.
The words refused to leave her mouth. The sound stuffed itself down her throat. It burned of suffocation. Even her chokes became silent.
Look: she is not a martyr.
There’s a devil inside her.
All around her, people go about their lives. They remain speaking. After they leave, their residue stays, and she goes sniffing. That is what she eats. She spits out all the good after chewing it beyond recognition. She gets all the nutrients without consuming. She does what the devil tells her.
The people who speak the language of the blood of Jesus do not like to think about her. They do not try to save her. She walks into their churches and their schools. She lets their children into her home to play with her devil-children and their devil-toys. She cooks them her devil-food. She does all of this, and they do not try to save her.
They take her devil-money and dye her devil-hair so that it looks natural.
She does all of this without sound.
She claps her hands and nothing. She starts her car and nothing. Everything she does comes out mute.
Her husband and children are not inherently evil, but she has been poisoning them with her devilspices for years and years. Even if they are not fully evil, there is no escaping what has been infused in their blood and saliva.
Her husband thinks of killing her.
But then, he goes to church and speaks the language of the blood of Jesus, and the thoughts are extracted.
He is still impure, but he is saved.
Her children think of killing her. They do not speak the language of the blood of Jesus. They will not be saved, not if she can help it.
Look: she did not ask for the devil to be inside her.
When she was a girl, she would look up: up to the broad sky of heaven. She would imagine herself there, floating against the sun. To those below, she would look like a dark freckle, a mole, a mark of beauty planted on the face of the sun.
Now, she sears when she touches.
Now, she can no longer crane her neck to look at the broad sky of heavens.
Now, she can only look down. The dirt and the dirty are her punishment. They are what the devil wants for her.