emmaishowling

[emmaishowling]

The Divinity Of Woman

Squinting at reflection in pocket mirror transforming into something pretty. Caked on clay powdered nose eyeliner applied immaculately while the city bus shakes   the elbows of suits, skids, kids dig into your ribcage. Laying back, thinking of England, in the basement of a newly licensed eyelash technician. She glues synthetic hairs all around hollowed out eye sockets so you can look like the age you’re regressing to. Pinching pennies, pilfering your boyfriends’ wallets, searching the concrete for scraps of cash lost in the street. Hoping to fill your mouth with synthetic hyaluronic acid like the monstrously beautiful bizarre prostitutes who fall on their asses at the same parties as you. God’s divine image of a whore vulgar/blasphemous prayers erupting past lips like screams a slave to your biological urges/dreams competing with other chicks for subpar sperm. On the run from your own blessed body searching for divinity, a fugitive, of blessed Eve’s villanous femininity.

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[emmaishowling]

Female Trouble (1974)

[emmaishowling]

I understand you in a language I don’t speak.

-my poem

[emmaishowling]

Decay Countryside Vignettes

I

 As I walk down the steps to our garden,

                        I find a dead hedgehog,

            shiny white skull exposed, picked clean

            by God’s other creatures.

There’s a million maggots feasting on his organs,

                        squirming around in his guts,

            his quills move like he’s still alive and breathing.

I wonder if he’s the hedgehog

                        who stole from our compost,

            who froze like a deer caught in headlights

            when we turned our flashlights towards him,

            who ran for cover under the hydrangeas,

            when the wild boars tore through our fields,

            yellow eyes squinting in the shadows,

            ugly little babies squealing at their sides.

 

II

 I crawl on my hands and knees

like an animal in the underbrush.

Sniffing out mushrooms and roots,

thorns digging into the back of my neck

pulling out my hair in big blonde clumps.

My hand sinks into a rotting rat,

                        caught up in the brambles

            while playing the same game I’m playing;

            little house on the prairie, Robinson Crusoe,

            confederate American fantasy, faking autonomy.

We’re just playing survival games,

                        like the ones we played as kids

            with sticks, berries, our expansive imaginations.

           

III

 The time to harvest comes too fast,

                        my hands aren’t quick enough

            to collect our spoils before the first frost,

            before every fruit falls off the vine,

            before every legume catches cold

                        and dies.

The rotting nightshades in our garden

                        smell exactly like the dead hedgehog.

I worry that I’ve lost the innate human ability

                        to recognize the smell

            of the decomposition of my fellow man,

            its smell blending in with the decay

            of everything else around me.

Maybe I wouldn’t notice if my husband

                        started shooting trespassers

            with the gun we don’t have,

            putting their heads on stakes

            to ward off others.

 

IV

 Our neighbour is known for getting drunk

                        off his own supply,

            for beating his women,

            for shaving the heads of his children.

We’ve never seen him

                        but we hear him,

            errant raspy yells,

            strains of bad techno music

            at all odd hours.

I wonder if he’s on the side of the Catholics

                        or the Protestants

            in the ideological war that’s wrapped itself

            around the mountains for centuries,

            buried deep in the hamlets and villages

            around us/in us.

Our neighbour blasts out the brains

                        of his half wild cat

            with a rifle at midnight, execution style,

            when the cat crawls back home on his belly,

                        seeking mercy

after ingesting some commonplace poison.

Shot rings out, bullet rips a hole

                        through the density of quiet

            that hangs heavy in the night sky.

  Our neighbour giveth life

                        and our neighbour taketh away. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Substack: emmaishowling.substack.com Insta: emmaishowling