(Kindra M. Austin)

Every morning, I wake up. I keep
waking
up.
And
sometimes I’m angry at my opened eyes, cos sometimes
brittle fingernails
scratching inside of my skull, they split and rip and bleed and blood
leaks and shorts my circuits.
Not enough to kill me
dead,
just enough to kill my will. And so I stare up at the ceiling,
counting back the years, the weeks, the goddamned days I’ve
given in and left myself to
dreadful
entertainments. Circus tents of made up horrors
dressed in homemade gore—red corn syrup and hot dogs and
mushy elbow macaroni.
What am I? Incubator for the fly.
bzzzzzz
I am infestation,
lying.

Nighttime calls, and so I answer,
cos that’s where I
fuckin belong.
Inside
black ink
sky—where nerve endings scream in silence of
outer space.

(Christine E. Ray)

Every morning, I wake up. I keep
waking
up,
fighting cobwebs of nightmares that cling to my brain like black taffy.
My bedcovers are a cotton shroud, moldering around heavy limbs.
The smell of decay and musty lavender fill my nose, make me wretch,
remind me that I’m rotting from the inside in this weak vessel of flesh.
The sunlight creeping under the blinds is acid that burns my eyes.
I close my lids tightly, seeking escape from the awaiting nothing,
but even my ghosts have retreated for the day;
and I’m not left with anything but long hours I no longer
have the energy to fill.
What am I? An empty husk of a woman.
A corpse with a pulse,
who forgot to fall.

Nighttime calls, and so I answer
sleep’s promise of oblivion.
The electric sheep I try to count
sting me like jellyfish,
leave weeping blisters on my soul
before melting into the obsidian.

© 2019 Christine E. Ray & Kindra M. Austin

Christine E. Ray lives outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A former Managing Editor of Sudden Denouement Publications, she founded Indie Blu(e) Publishing with Kindra M. Austin in September 2018. Ray is the author of Composition of a Woman and The Myths of Girlhood. Her writing is also featured in We Will Not Be Silenced: The Lived Experience of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Told Powerfully Through Poetry, Prose, Essay, and Art, Anthology Volume I: Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective, Swear to Me, and All the Lonely People. Read more of her work at https://braveandrecklessblog.com/.

Kindra M. Austin lives in an unobtrusive village in Mid-Michigan. She is the author of two novels (Magpie in August, and For You Rowena) and two books of poetry and prose (Constant Muses, and TWELVE). Her third novel is expected to be released in early 2020, and her third book of poetry, All the Beginnings of Everything, will be published by Indie Blu(e) in July, 2019. Austin and Christine E. Ray founded Indie Blu(e) Publishing in September, 2018.

Other publications include contributions to We Will Not Be Silenced: The Lived Experience of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Told Powerfully Through Poetry, Prose, Essay, and Art, Anthology Volume I: Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective, Swear to Me, and All the Lonely People.