Do Not Think Words
Jessica B. Weisenfels
they are only little cushions
of air
of nothing
of diffusing
the late awareness
do not love the word
because
when it is just a word
it vibrates in the mouth
it does not make anything
it is the narrator
it is the act
of being
who translates
in transitives
intransitives
intrinsic contradictions
contraindications
for the moment of spin
to find the child
in the slant of light
it is in the knowing
the child
is not good
is not correct
is only child
it is not the magic
of sliding syllabication
of predicates in pixels
of levitated participles
it is not in the chemicals
it is in the thinking of things
it is the translation
made over again
to speak the failures
of itself
to make the hand
of breaking necks
to make the intrusions
to crush the bones
to bleed the knuckles
to speak shackles
to shackle
to dance the water
in drowning
to make the air
to make the aid
to say
it was never right how it was
it is in knowing
the fracture
is The Sight
it is not declarative
it is only nomenclature
it is the unnaming
of the holy things
the terror in two syllables
the woodshed of bad stories
how your great uncle laughed
as his mother kicked from rafters
how it is not
mother of god
it is god-bearer
how it does not require
a womb to bear with gods
how your father was murdered
if you are lucky
how your father left town
if you are ordinary
how your father only drank
if you are spectacular
how the ones who made you
sucked nectar from your bones
how you stood bloody
before the mirror
how everyone divorced themselves
and you were born in two
how the limbs of the concubine
become the message of your obedience
how the cricket died of the luck
of someone’s brother’s tearing
how his wife was a prostitute
who hung his skin on branches
how the myths
become your narrative
how your mother was a pure productof chemical and flesh
how the body
remembers the moment
how your rapists
are all husbands now
how you knew your difference
your differance
how you were alone
or lonely
how you only beat
what you love
it is not rhetorical
you are only angry
you are only adjectives
it does not make the difference
it does not speak the other
it becomes the axe
if it is very good
do not hook the oxen
the affect is the labored beast
the bad ones speak the best
because they are the freest
they are all first drafts
until they can be known
until they smooth
in the hand
until they are not the head
but the hair behind it
do not spare
the voice
the image
the fragment
but do not make a body
it belongs to no one
and no one can live in it
it is not oxygen
but oxytocin
that makes you this way
if you are lucky
it is epinephrine
it is your uninhibited reuptake
it is the contradictions
it is not a personhood
it has no blood or breath
unless it has been bled on
it is only a collection
of steady failures
of beating wings in chest
it will never livethe way you want it to
they are never wrong
until you die of them
Jessica B. Weisenfels lives in rural Arkansas where she accumulates chronic diseases and steals language from her children. Her work has been published in numerous local publications and may also be found at 9th Street Laboratories and in Sink Review. She has work forthcoming in Fence and MadHat Lit.
