Hat Fidkin
Selected speculative poetry, from Parturient Ecstasy (2020)
Splayed open like a deer to be gutted,
ribcage filled with green beetle wings,
gossamer shimmer undulates.
Tear open her womb and you will find a worm
burrowing through the sovereign purple flesh-scape.
Digesting what remains, drinking amniotic sap.
A glucose river strained through needle teeth.
Bloody-throated, she gargles hymns to soothe the neoplasm
as ochre sands pour from her wounds,
now light enough to cease her sink towards the mantle.
I’ve seen my future.
Dancing upon dust motes in slanted sunlight,
flickering in the halos and starbursts that permeate my eyelids
and my psyche.
Totality of human mind annihilated in yolk-induced reverie.
Interstellar voyage made possible by ovum essence,
my earth body remains, yet I cradle
the orchid child with eyes of star anise,
her liquorice roots crawling around my wrists.
Tasting the dewsparkle of the second moon rising
like a pearl on my tongue.
Terrene pleasures are rendered insignificant
when you have sifted the soil of another world through your fingers.
Attempt #16 to cave in my skull:
Unsuccessful; all but for a yellow bruise in the centre of my forehead.
Same colour as my snot that inflates when I scream then dries
and I suffocate underneath the sink.
I run myself an acid bath and soak in its lemon glow
All that remains is sinew and bone
and my ground-down limestone teeth
from which molluscs and coral escape and regenerate
rapid cell division birthing
a reef in my bathtub for the end times.
Microorganisms chew my fat and take refuge inside my pelvis
I have given them my life’s water; I am the acrid sea.
But still my gristle has a throbbing headache.
Even that cannot be silenced by dissolving entirely.
Mandible maxilla
like stalk cut away from plant
left to wither
as fungi beast infection takes hold of brain.
Green-yellow plasmodium shatters the back of my skull
and crawls up the walls.
I see everything.
I am a moving membrane that fear cannot permeate.
The man with willow arms sees
a nexus between worlds in the gutpile splayed across the dust.
Unrest is in the soul of the eight-legged sacrifice,
Its longing wail reverberating like a chorus sung
into outer space
like it’s the largest church to ever exist.
Angels living amongst the stars feel its refractions,
tasting the notes of a never-ending death cry.
The man with willow arms eats
the entrails for his vitality.
Saffron strands stick in his teeth and
tears of crude oil run down his cheeks
into the mouth of the hummingbird nesting on his shoulder.
I germinate in the void waiting for him to call me
into the desert
so the next goat can feast upon my bone marrow.
Archaeopteris vascular system is the lifeblood of Earth.
Under a hissing moon, parasitoids awaken from tombs of amber.
They chew their way out-
placental abruption beneath the ground causing heavy root bleeding.
A frenzy marked by scent of the flesh,
They attach themselves to gaping mouths of their mammal hosts.
Implantation wane flicker die
Bodies no longer our own.
The sky is the colour of wheat when they stir.
Grinding bones into dust, quenching carnal desires.
No longer are we merely human; temporal; worldly.
Flea-riddled husks outside,
but our viscera housing a macrocosm.
Waist deep in salt-lake.
Shrouded by its feathers, enveloped in blackness,
I feel in me your non-human translucence.
Caught in the undertow,
only shreds of memory remain.
My lungs full of water and its claw upon my breast,
invisible waves crumble my sandcastle
and fountains of dust swirl and scratch the sclera
of a singular eye.
Blue Oblivion
Now go on dancing.
I am calm as you drown me.
[1]
Bright bell-sounds chime between my ears.
Foxfire glow in the reservoir of my consciousness.
Bioluminescent vibration
Cerebral Atlantis
Water bees swim and buzz,
weaving honeycombs from my misfiring synapses.
CRACK
Liquid gold drips into your open mouth.
Burrowing larvae and grey matter coat the ground beneath us.
Lock my jaw. Flicker my eyes.
I am deaf, dumb, and blind in your arms.
[2]
You place my stuporous shell atop the bed of insects.
Both juvenile, awaiting metamorphosis.
Our pupae will encase us when the time is right,
and with it the gift of vision bestowed.
My belly is soft, dusted with gold and moults,
but touch me wrong and I will sting.
Our honey is cloudy and wax clogs our gills,
but we were already drowning on dry land.
Bottle feed me the Queen’s jelly;
on the sixth day I shall rise again.
Drones and workers swim back into my ears.
Cranial Genesis damned to repeat until I am light as a feather.