Kim Parko
We scaled the hirsute cliff. Wondering all the while if it was geology or animal. And
wondering what would meet us at the top: What vanishing point? What expanse
fanning open? What history strewn behind us? We asked each other, but honestly
couldn’t remember, “From where did we set out?” Our hope was for the big teat, be
it flesh or mountain, as long as it was fed by untainted duct. We did feel a meanness
in us, nurtured by thirst, voiced by our diverse mouths: Sammy had a butterfly
mouth. Lucy had a salmon mouth. Alex had a stoma. We bickered, and then cried,
and then enjoyed the soft ripple through us as we touched. At midpoint, a forceful
rhythm nearly shook us off. But our limber fingers ensnarled the fur.
When that giant pigeon came down and that one apple grew on the tree, so large,
and when we could do nothing but breathe into each other’s mouths until we all
passed out, and then wake and slap each other until our cheeks broke open like
bruised plums, and when the ocean cleaved its way to foothills, and when the winds
from the west rolled in the ash blanket, and when the walls that held our ghosts in
their pens loosened one brick and then another, that’s when we stripped off our sun
suits and lay down, belly up, to let the bright arrows pierce us, and when dark came,
we offered ourselves to that giant pigeon and its cavernous beak and all the stars it
had ever swallowed. That’s when, mouth to mouth, we breathed the last breath out
of each other and into our own ghosts.
A translucent curtain came down over our collective eye. When we tried to view the
horizon, we saw nothing but flat light. The game was beyond us, feeding from an
abundant meadow. There was a flutter of monarchs that lived above in a cloud.
When our pain intensified, we went up to them and watched their proboscides
unfurl. They would put their feet on our fingers and arms. They would perch lightly,
imperceptibly, so that when we came back down, we were unaware of the
butterflies coating us. We were starving. We felt our fat sear away and cover our
bones in a shimmer of grease. Lucy echoed an old song through her hollows and
then caved in to her grave. One after another, we caved in. The curtain thickened.
The meadow grew its edges into the forest where the predators’ dens had grown
over. The monarchs drifted back to their cloud.
But then, we drowned. We heard a sound-glimpse at first—a faint rumbling that
jostled our cells. We’d had the dream over and over; we scrambled up the bank
while the water wall roared closer. Sometimes it rushed high through a narrow
channel, sweeping us along into a sizeless body. Sometimes it curled its impossible
weight over us. We woke with the ebb in our lungs. And then we saw a stark beacon
that Lucy gripped in her palm. An altar would hold the stone that told the story. The
stone had condensed what was once the ground into its strata. We traced, with our
fingers, shell and sand and then metal and then the thick dermis of plastic bags. Our
fingers felt the ruts of simple etchings decorating the surface. Lucy said, “Theses are
the shapes that rest in the midst of our chaos.”
Kim Parko is a writer and visual artist who is interested in the blur rather than the distinction. Her first book, Cure All (Caketrain Press, 2010) was the first non-competition book selected by Caketrain Press for publication. Her second book, The Grotesque Child (Tarpaulin Sky Press, forthcoming 2016), is the co-winner of the Tarpaulin Sky Press 2016 book prize. She is an associate professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Return to January 2016 Edition
wondering what would meet us at the top: What vanishing point? What expanse
fanning open? What history strewn behind us? We asked each other, but honestly
couldn’t remember, “From where did we set out?” Our hope was for the big teat, be
it flesh or mountain, as long as it was fed by untainted duct. We did feel a meanness
in us, nurtured by thirst, voiced by our diverse mouths: Sammy had a butterfly
mouth. Lucy had a salmon mouth. Alex had a stoma. We bickered, and then cried,
and then enjoyed the soft ripple through us as we touched. At midpoint, a forceful
rhythm nearly shook us off. But our limber fingers ensnarled the fur.
When that giant pigeon came down and that one apple grew on the tree, so large,
and when we could do nothing but breathe into each other’s mouths until we all
passed out, and then wake and slap each other until our cheeks broke open like
bruised plums, and when the ocean cleaved its way to foothills, and when the winds
from the west rolled in the ash blanket, and when the walls that held our ghosts in
their pens loosened one brick and then another, that’s when we stripped off our sun
suits and lay down, belly up, to let the bright arrows pierce us, and when dark came,
we offered ourselves to that giant pigeon and its cavernous beak and all the stars it
had ever swallowed. That’s when, mouth to mouth, we breathed the last breath out
of each other and into our own ghosts.
A translucent curtain came down over our collective eye. When we tried to view the
horizon, we saw nothing but flat light. The game was beyond us, feeding from an
abundant meadow. There was a flutter of monarchs that lived above in a cloud.
When our pain intensified, we went up to them and watched their proboscides
unfurl. They would put their feet on our fingers and arms. They would perch lightly,
imperceptibly, so that when we came back down, we were unaware of the
butterflies coating us. We were starving. We felt our fat sear away and cover our
bones in a shimmer of grease. Lucy echoed an old song through her hollows and
then caved in to her grave. One after another, we caved in. The curtain thickened.
The meadow grew its edges into the forest where the predators’ dens had grown
over. The monarchs drifted back to their cloud.
But then, we drowned. We heard a sound-glimpse at first—a faint rumbling that
jostled our cells. We’d had the dream over and over; we scrambled up the bank
while the water wall roared closer. Sometimes it rushed high through a narrow
channel, sweeping us along into a sizeless body. Sometimes it curled its impossible
weight over us. We woke with the ebb in our lungs. And then we saw a stark beacon
that Lucy gripped in her palm. An altar would hold the stone that told the story. The
stone had condensed what was once the ground into its strata. We traced, with our
fingers, shell and sand and then metal and then the thick dermis of plastic bags. Our
fingers felt the ruts of simple etchings decorating the surface. Lucy said, “Theses are
the shapes that rest in the midst of our chaos.”
Kim Parko is a writer and visual artist who is interested in the blur rather than the distinction. Her first book, Cure All (Caketrain Press, 2010) was the first non-competition book selected by Caketrain Press for publication. Her second book, The Grotesque Child (Tarpaulin Sky Press, forthcoming 2016), is the co-winner of the Tarpaulin Sky Press 2016 book prize. She is an associate professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Return to January 2016 Edition