“Vault of Heaven Shines”
By JW Summerisle
one raven to another said
I KNOW SOMETHING
the cost of this curves like rabbits. propagates its own analysis like a game to be surveryed by the most high alice queen who in her quantities will force bone broken digits into drawers she draws down from on high with her blue sky thinking. fancy how the High One sees us tremble, trebled in our debt to all this betting on such blind earth. QUOTH the raven ought to say see how it shines not this vast unserious shod of dirt. you cannot eat it. cannot make a place to sleep nor find a spine among its bones to lend you any comfort. a fool and his money are soon parted. brown haired girls rush late into the fray. impulsive. wheat-fed. stupid. they lay a feast for crows on hawked old silver. the bill to be paid by the one who kills her.
“The Doomscrolling of Tollund Man”
(i) wheatgerm objects heavy with the bodies of kings. the barley mow growing vast on grand and hollow hopes for a high one who knows what it is to be wheatbread spread so thin.
(ii) machines from this steam and hiss. they're for suffering, you see. the grin remained for some time, under the plow. i can see it even now. amberylnn struggles beneath the weight of this shambling thing. flesh from god torn down down tumbled down. well after such a fall as this i shall think nothing of falling down the stairs.
(iii) i can't help but think what it would have been useful to know. sea serpents knit up grass roots, bind tails to blind us swallowing so much earth so much themselves we can't see. we can't tell. abstract blind spots form from folk tunes sung from the mouths of compuslive girls we have only ever seen on screens. ouroboros. our infant queens.
“Conversations with a Doormouse”
and i have seen this so many times; dennis prager cutting pieces off the dodo. manhandling displays at the museum. his white hair half meshed feathers from the lies he flew. a qualification of the air. when i have accepted my portion perhaps i will shave my head. never speak. become less girl. less alice liddell. let sepia men check me before i sleep. dodo the dodgson and his language for little girls his letters his letting go the blood body for black and white for keeping us small and sweet so light and so much so i shall think nothing of falling down the stairs. angels maybe who cannot read will fly down here to intervene and catch us in the looking act. victorian fantasy in poison glass. see here the label: propaganda. do no eat. so masticate the flesh. make sweet. the apples rain from the birds beak as dennis breaks it off to keep. is this heaven? what a shame. all posed and pretty. so nice so neat. clean combed bird no bigger than a baby. than dennis prager's conscience maybe. perhaps we never speak again. i learn something at least; read poison before tasting age. the stale death of human speech.