La Petite Zine - Issue 28

Look it was that the sister had vertigo, in her head she stepped through
three loose planks in the dock—took with her her father's silver,
made for the kingdom. There were cormorants see, she wanted them
embalmed & enamored of her. Consider what facts belonged to her,
which facts were not bodily, which were once the rumor of ligaments.
In her head she fell through the dock then & into the shade,
took with her the tablecloth, depression glass, took the voice as it was,
it was like snake oil stopped in her ears—heard the voice say
Death was. How she gathered then joint & sinew, concluded what was left
of her fear, what was left of the man who would hurt her, they could fit
tamped in a snuffbox. Imagined the driftwood when it was flotsam
at the shore, when it become driftwood again—her hold on sight
was like this, felt herself there & there & there. Took with her cat skulls,
mink stole, feather of a great, rare bird. The story receded, dawned again:
In her head she had traveled great distances: there came a song or
a dervish, there came the highway or There is no staying. In the lowering land
she came within inches of a pathway so she thought. In any case the scene
entered her like a medicine, her condition went into remission, went blank,
went into a strange room with a kitchen sink, a counter made of drift.
There came the fulcrum sound of a trumpet, always the mind carried on its silt dread.
In her head her limbs hit the water the voice sunk as it smacked of salvo,
then decency. Muzak came, like a great sheet falling over her, lightly then, lightly.