Faye Chevalier is a Philadelphia-based poet and essayist. Her work has been featured in the tiny, Peach Mag, Witch Craft Magazine, The Horse Less Review, Bedfellows, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter at @bratcore.
my teeth have been extra fragile + useless lately
[i]
the act of speaking of Jessie & PJ’s
tweet-history of
pegging in a graduate-
level medieval lyrics class; like,
“oh yea, i am way into the trying-
not-to-be-spite-sexed movement,”
tht lil-cute guise™,
fascia-faced
or all-vivisected,
i forget which—
[ii]
was tagged a canorous dilettante
of bad graces;
“consumption is, like, so scary”—
[iii]
& refuse cues too well (“thems bad”), a
perfect casualty-casualty—
like, i want to live trice-wise, but, like
“i keep being broken
by honorary neo-Platonists,”
my torn-up mantra,
petal-ed as if in hopes
of absolution from the
need-need to apologize
to you for not giving myself up
enough, for feeling like i am giving myself
up for giving my(
)self am i
giving is this giving?—
[iv]
an iPhone app tht will send
you a push notification if i starve myself
(again)
so you can come & find me
so you can break my teeth in—
[v]
the act of waking unsettled by how the poet Ange
Mlinko situates the poet Juliana Leslie to
the likeness of the poet T.S. Eliot;
bc rather than trying to end the world
(as does our boy, Eliot [the poet]),
Leslie (the poet) embraces & lives out the fact
tht it is already
over—
[vi]
Blaise fell asleep
listening to music
w her door open—
i tweet “get drunk / go to
bed / wake up / read a bunch of ‘i
love you, it looks like rain’ / go to
bed / wake up / read a bunch of
‘i love you, it looks like ra[in’]”;
“This could be the year”
writes the poet June Gehringer—
there is literally no difference
between my body & tinder[dot]com
kindling some wall-pressings-for
my dearest resident blood-ghost™,
i.e. my newfound razor burns amend
an already faded home-having,
& now my say-what-you-will-s are
either all calcified or rusted, becoming
the cutest lil object on television, the
ragged roadmaps i swear i have not
kissed so, sleep less now;
i promise i will not make a sound—
moth_generator
symmetry-sets, born of noise
{__ think}, for there are
finger tap-ings
where
__ mouth-wings
{may}
be—
__ be the act of immersion itself—
text-kin + in-born
recursive-ity,
an integration,
a vesper-saying—
__ candid ritual towards eyes-having—
{how bright
thou art}
filled
w/
wire-ing
moth
wings—
medieval_death
{names, sheer +
bright (archive)d
} take ___ under them
spokes
in the mud,
deep + hidden-like
(___ am brought for) the act
of being taken
{up} under bridges
where discarded
carts ft flour-
bundles +
___, fathoming a
{name}
living on a
body
grow green w/ them
replies
in craft,
in(deed), held
w/ purpose, or ___
purpose, living w/
less dungeon-al
thought than one
had thought though
broken bods ne’er-
-theless, when begun,
___ mean, when
found, ___ mean,
when living ___
mean, when bodied,
___ mean,
{ne’ertheless
solid-like
ft too-cute skeletons
+ ___ death-
-angel-friend}
given back to(o)
(soon to) The Lord
like flotsam
{them names, per
misadventure}—
{“found by his wife
(his pierced body)”}
“spared a rightful
death”
“filled to the
neck in”
“strangers”
(so willful)—
am ___ meant
to live out
bodies of
strangers
___ want (?)
a sheltering
history, ___
death-angel-
-friend {ne’erthe-
-less solid-
-like} taken under
them spokes
stripped own
(archive)
remember when them
spokes turned,
when them misaligned
mouths +
galleys
ne’ertheless
may thems
quiet bodies
(___ quiet recours
of a body
w/ open tracts
w/ glazed over
limbs whose names
be these), quiet
norms shattering
over the mud
under them years,
quiet bridges
ancient(/)archive
body, ___
sequestr
for Ayé Aton
“…when angels are bored at night, they write your nightmares” (Jose Rivera, “Marisol”)
this partition, a satellite-d sex-bot,
an as-a-Marisol’s-guardian-angel,
her heaven now-clothed in photograph
***
my flightless eyes—
(bright) artifice—
input-effigy,
ray-posited
for withering
***
for this is a city of dead murals, of men
who write of their slave labor
in their resumes
***
level-headstones invite
an easier sense of care—
sentient credit-scores
and the act of abjection
***
(“) at what point
do i become memoriam:
when my body
is stricken
with Nimda?
when (my) departure
reads itself as willing-like? (”)
***
lithe-suspension—
not-future,
rather-potential(ity)—
rivet guns folding-in the eyes of G-d
***
the act of being born with implants
uplinked already, the act of star-taking
***
(salt [or])
pillar-earth—
the act of threat-being,
the act of skin-searching
***
“the sex-bot’s
object-ness
lies
in the architecture
of solution-ness”
***
another Marisol-death—
grass-stains fill gaps in marble
where the mower-blades begin digging
***
so to whom goes that Mars-belt?
so to whom goes that unseen yellow star-smear?
so to whom goes my spectacular-demise, non-Earthside et al?
***
the act of becoming statufied—
the sex-bot as estuary
for these are our new-orbits—
ants filling in holes in the cold stone
***
the act of wintering,
a kinetic-export—
the sex-bot as sanctuary
***
“carry the other-Marisol(s) all heaven-like,
as many as your seven shoulders can bear”