Farren Stanley and Jessalyn Wakefield
The syphilitic queen and her hunchbacked litter
She grooves like a worm.
It is not a foot or a pelt you are looking for a Rabbit must only
believe in destiny
tribulation is a carnival ride.
And a doll, made even in her image, is not a
rabbit.
Make your own luck. Articulate her
at the joints, pass your hand through the smoke.
You are cleansed / hello.
Detail from a Haitian bus.
Press it down.
Shred it and apply spit
and gum. Then press it down.
Don’t go down angry, just go
down. Press it down.
As long as it is feeling, press it down. The brood,
two by two. What a dummy / hello
In the future past the bus crashes & explodes into molded confetti
hello/ I’ve noticed you have a wound.
The knight unbuckles dolly’s plastic shoe/ show without blemish.
Her joints articulating in the breeze.
The Queen of syphilis noodles waving anemones in the spinal column
it isn’t always like this
but now it is like this.
Farren Stanley’s place-of-origin is Santa Fe, NM, but her heart followed her body to Tuscaloosa, AL. She lives under a magnolia tree with two dogs, two goldfish and seven orchids. She and Jessalyn have been playing together for ten years. You can find her work in Handsome, elimae, RealPoetik, Caketrain, H_NGM_N and at Greying Ghost Press.
Jessalyn Wakefield is a practitioner of typography, writing, and other theories of correspondence. You can find her work at amihuman.net.