"wind-up teeth five- a triptych" and "objects that touch each other aka the M//Other diptych"

by abbi page (they/them)

wind-up teeth five- a triptych

After Clarice Lispector’s character Joanna in Near to the Wild Heart

1.

“The certainty that evil is my calling, thought Joanna….She felt a perfect animal inside her, full of contradictions, of selfishness and vitality.”- Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

I, I, I

am/was

bursting forth

black skin peeling back

dropping

in chunks

am/was

serpent silver scale&

banished from Eden—

am/was skkinfolk

girlHusband boyWife

gnawed on ribs to be//become

sssssineater

am / was

sinking six-year old teeth

into a white boy’s palm

in my kinder-garden class

for stealing my favorite pink crayon—

bloodknowledge

spilling out between his life line and love line

chunk of manchild on tongue.

What holds the body together.

Mama says

am/was vicious vitality

am/was the strangest creature she’s ever met

am/was insisting incipient incisors

am/was sinking

into the scalp of my first crush

in our neighborhood swimming pool

budding black breasts against his alabaster back

fighting his neck into the crux of my elbow

choke&

dull, quickthumping

am/was 8&unfraid of drowning, just

[

] emptiness

Consider me hungry.

2.

“How, after all, to split time?” -Christina Sharpe, In The Wake

I, I, I

am/was

sinking out of a stranger’s womb

crying red

two taut teeth—

like everyone else

how boring

am//was//

drowning the doctor

with my bloodmagma

sizzling gleam of savagery

in my eye, himpetrified&

snips yet

phantom umbilical cord uncut—

am/was 4& swallowing myself whole

&swallowing Mama whole

&swallowing Grandma whole

am/was

14& in the church pew at my Aunt’s wake

Mama’s sharp nails

digging at the flesh

bulging on the back of the black of my hand

which had held

the torn children’s bible on my nightstand

under a book with Harley Quinn

orgasming on the cover

am/was 11&homealone

testing torrid kisses on beautifulbooks

in our cramped hallway

trips&bends&black toe backwards

falls& heatedechoes of some other ancient mother

calling out for me

hungry

3.

“I’m looking at the little girl bleeding out and it’s like I’m looking in a mirror.” - Okwui Okpokwasili, Bronx Gothic

am/was

bleeding from my black pussy

for the first time

alone in the fifth grade girl’s bathroom

am/was

shoving fist down own throat

reaching for

AM I?

AM I?

AM I?

SUPPOSED TO CLEAN ALL THIS SHIT UP.

am/was 4& swallowing myself whole

&swallowing Mama whole

&swallowing Grandma whole

&10&

Mama says

&9&

my thick thighs are

&1&

my birth mother’s

&6&

cracking teeth

&14&

my breasts

&8&

gasping for desire

&

AM I?

AM I?

AM I?

[

]

“Hi, Mama!”

“Hi, Baby”

iwatch&

you scrub white

counters in the kitchen

sing gospel

is something to feed on

MamaHoney, MamaHoney

Sing again.

Sing again.

---

objects that touch each other aka the M//Other diptych

one. “Rorshöck!” (a game with personality)

Consider me morphing.

Imagine me ink and splattered across the page. If identity is a game, I am winning at all costs. Picture my skin steam-rolled into playing cards. Mama says that God has already won your battles, so I ask what’s the use in playing? Mama says that I am still a little black girl, that I’ll grow up when I leave my Wonderlands, but I say if I stop falling down the rabbit hole, then I might shatter on the landing. When I was four years old, I climbed into my own mouth, swallowed myself whole, lled my belly with my baby afro, and then my brother ate me too, and sometimes I think that’s why it’s so hard for me to picture myself into being because he is out there in the galaxy, belly-opping through solar systems, struggling for oxygen, snatching up and feasting on other alien beings, and my black-shell-doll casing sits at my desk typing. And what does that say about me? Mama says I imagine things, that I always turn my nothing into something, and that if I am empty, I should let the word of God ll me, but I say I am stuck at tea time, slurping up stars through a bendy-straw in an attempt to suck myself back into myself, and isn’t that enough? Isn't it good to hunger and thirst? Isn’t it good to always want more? Winning at all costs. Winning at all costs. Winning at all costs. And sometimes I wish the Queen of Red Hearts would scream “OFF WITH HER HEAD! OFF WITH HER HEAD!” after I demolish her at her own game of croquet (my mallet a rocketship and my ball the sun), then I could walk around with my head in my hands, scooping up knowledge and other piles of shit, instead of on my shoulders where it feels so elsewhere.

two. sea-green lamp (cracking all over, painted blossoms on the back)

Consider me angelic.

Squint at my body, like it’s sunshine, like my eclipsed being could burn your eyes out. Rewrite my internalized metaphor until darkness is a thing that puries. //YOU MUST CLOSE YOUR EYES OR YOU WON’T SEE ANYTHING// Picture me falling. See me falling. I am falling, and sometimes I have wings and actually might be ying. I am no Alice, and I am not my Wonderlands. Or at least the parts of me wrapped in Kente cloths and sealed with edge-control gel exist elsewhere. I still sleep with my lamp light on most nights, and you may think that’s embarrassing, but I know that I was taught to fear the dark and the things that go bump in it, so I guess you could say I was taught to fear myself and all of my exes. Mama says that God should be my everything, that He makes up the worlds I should exist in, but I say my worlds are spinning, orbiting one another, cracking, crashing, colliding, destroying my own atmosphere, my own way of breathing; I hope that I am not killing God or my chances at heaven. I ride those world-chunks like a coyote cowboy rides o into the sunset, away from story-endings and the idea of nality and any type of eternal existence after death. My fears are my Wonderlands. And so I hope the light from my lamp scares those worlds away from my dreamscapes. I fear the way my giant-pinkandpurple-stued penguin watches me while I sleep. When my mother and I walk up the steep slope of our street, sometimes there’s an old white man waiting for the memory of me speeding down the hill on my bicycle and crashing into my neighbor’s bushes to stop me in my tracks (How do I know the penguin in my room isn’t him?). I’d like to think I was ying. I mean I know I was ying until I was falling and then let me tell you I was falling. Through amingos and chickens and tables and gardens and raccoon skulls and mushrooms and the mad hatter’s newest creations. And I want to be light, but I am anything but. And so I will tell myself that darkness is WONDER, but for a while I will struggle to believe that even dreams have a tangible existence.