(no subject)
tongues that taste you back
sulli/victoria, pg-13, 480ⓦ
Note: Thirty minute exercise. Poem by Anne Sexton.
No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.*
Her skin is cold like porcelain, cheeks pale and stinging in the bitter cold. She brushes a stray strand of hair away from her face, curls tangled into her mouth by the wind.
It is dark, and the ground is like shadows before her, damp soft earth punctuated by the hard surface of a stone, the crackle of leaf and twig. The wind, howling between the barren arches of trees, sounds like wolves, lonely and hungry.
Turn left at the second fork in the road, her mother had said, or had it been turn right? She imagines the curve of her mother's mouth, sees her ashen and dry lips form the word left, a snakelike flick of the tongue.
Her home is a sleepy town, full of dust and simple folk. It is filled with warmth, cottages capped with brown like a permanent turn of autumn. The bread in her basket has turned cold, the crust hard under her knuckles. She looks back for a moment, but behind her is only auburn sky and brambles.
She curls her fingers into the bright wool of her cape, like a flame in the dark. She turns left. The flowers in her basket are beginning to turn limp, the stalks thin and bruised. Her boots sink into the ground where the rain has been, the earth like a mouth that opens to welcome her in, hello, hello. She sinks down further the faster she walks, overgrown branches scratching at her arms and face as if to say, we're so glad to see you, won't you stay a while?
She reaches a clearing abruptly, as through every living thing had been swallowed into the ground. Be brave, her mother had said in the morning, fixing the clasps of her cape with her seamstress hands. And sing if you're afraid.
There are footsteps, and she opens her mouth, but the song dies in her throat.
"Hello, my pretty," the woman says, and her mouth is red, red like the berries she'd been warned not to pick and never to eat; she remembers, inexplicably, the time she'd eavesdropped and heard her neighbour saying, cherchez la femme.
"Who are you?" she says, hurls it like a retaliation.
"Who am I?" the woman repeats, and smiles, like scarlet on the edge of a knife. "I'm the bad wolf."
Her home is a cottage, full of dust and spiders. The flowers in her basket are dry, white petals and lavender crisp and fragile. The red dye of her cape has faded, but her hair still spills out from under her hood in perfect curls, her skin still as white as dandelion milk. She is walking when she is stopped by a man chopping wood with an axe, who asks, "Are you lost?"
"Yes," she says, and smiles, all teeth. Underneath the white handkerchief, her basket is full of sweetbreads.
sulli/victoria, pg-13, 480ⓦ
Note: Thirty minute exercise. Poem by Anne Sexton.
No matter what life you lead
the virgin is a lovely number:
cheeks as fragile as cigarette paper,
arms and legs made of Limoges,
lips like Vin Du Rhône,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes
open and shut.*
Her skin is cold like porcelain, cheeks pale and stinging in the bitter cold. She brushes a stray strand of hair away from her face, curls tangled into her mouth by the wind.
It is dark, and the ground is like shadows before her, damp soft earth punctuated by the hard surface of a stone, the crackle of leaf and twig. The wind, howling between the barren arches of trees, sounds like wolves, lonely and hungry.
Turn left at the second fork in the road, her mother had said, or had it been turn right? She imagines the curve of her mother's mouth, sees her ashen and dry lips form the word left, a snakelike flick of the tongue.
Her home is a sleepy town, full of dust and simple folk. It is filled with warmth, cottages capped with brown like a permanent turn of autumn. The bread in her basket has turned cold, the crust hard under her knuckles. She looks back for a moment, but behind her is only auburn sky and brambles.
She curls her fingers into the bright wool of her cape, like a flame in the dark. She turns left. The flowers in her basket are beginning to turn limp, the stalks thin and bruised. Her boots sink into the ground where the rain has been, the earth like a mouth that opens to welcome her in, hello, hello. She sinks down further the faster she walks, overgrown branches scratching at her arms and face as if to say, we're so glad to see you, won't you stay a while?
She reaches a clearing abruptly, as through every living thing had been swallowed into the ground. Be brave, her mother had said in the morning, fixing the clasps of her cape with her seamstress hands. And sing if you're afraid.
There are footsteps, and she opens her mouth, but the song dies in her throat.
"Hello, my pretty," the woman says, and her mouth is red, red like the berries she'd been warned not to pick and never to eat; she remembers, inexplicably, the time she'd eavesdropped and heard her neighbour saying, cherchez la femme.
"Who are you?" she says, hurls it like a retaliation.
"Who am I?" the woman repeats, and smiles, like scarlet on the edge of a knife. "I'm the bad wolf."
Her home is a cottage, full of dust and spiders. The flowers in her basket are dry, white petals and lavender crisp and fragile. The red dye of her cape has faded, but her hair still spills out from under her hood in perfect curls, her skin still as white as dandelion milk. She is walking when she is stopped by a man chopping wood with an axe, who asks, "Are you lost?"
"Yes," she says, and smiles, all teeth. Underneath the white handkerchief, her basket is full of sweetbreads.