by Ann Herold
The Mind is a Body Problem
Dead Upon Arrival
Tell me, what’s it like to fuck a living corpse?
That’s something you would know, I guess
To enter something warm, limp, and lifeless
Did you prop the body up and make it do silly poses?
Was this necrophilia meets Weekend at Bernie's?
I bet you thought manipulating bodies would be a lot easier without the head
Much less funny though
I wonder, how did you strip the body?
Did it feel like a parent undressing their slumbering child for bed?
Was the whole body stripped or was this more of a Winnie-the-Pooh situation?
Bottoms off was all that was required
You see, I wasn’t there
So I can only imagine what transpired
A wake of greasy faced college men
Number unknown
Baseball caps, basketball shorts, hockey pucks for brains
Did you form a ritual circle around the body?
Or was it more of a conga line straight to the vagina?
No, it was a kettle of vultures
Swarming in on a helpless gazelle that had been drugged unconscious
Was the body still warm when you tore into it?
Fresh and ripe for the pillaging
Were there wet slurping sounds?
Or was that drowned out by your mates heckling
I bet it was nice to not have to feign competence
For once you didn’t have to demonstrate that you didn’t know where to find the clit
That you had no idea how to pleasure anyone other than yourself
Did blood stain your latex when the body tore?
You probably didn’t realize how fragile a flesh cavern is
Was it hard to wiggle inside something so dry and clamped shut?
Like a hermit crab trying to squeeze into too small of a shell
Or trying to crawl inside the carcass of a freshly slaughtered fawn
Did you stop to wonder that this is why nature invented the warm up?
That maybe what was transpiring was a crime against nature
Or did you treat the dryness like a waiting dinner party invitation?
Bring your own gravy
Chew it up, mash it a bit
It will loosen soon enough
Maybe it wasn’t about the corpse at all
It was a performance piece
A bromance mating ritual
A contest to see who can most creatively commit a war crime
It’s nice that you kept up with old traditions
Wrapping the body in a flimsy sheet
Like it was already on the coroner's table
Like it was already prepped to be buried in the ground
Who's idea was it to move the body?
So that it wouldn’t be discovered at the scene of the crime
Who’s idea was it to complete the metaphor and toss the body in an alley?
Next to the trash and recycling bins?
And by the body,
I mean my body
Here is what I remember,
Searing, blinding, almost mind numbing pain
A type of cold that goes beyond your bones and enters your brain
Human teeth marks on my thigh
A trophy mark carved into my flesh
A warning, a reminder
Whore
It was not a simple act of cruelty
Not mundane or impersonal
This was sabotage
This was mortal combat dressed as self-gratification
Still I have hope for you
I don’t dole out death sentences easily
Not like you, apparently
How easy was it to forget there was a human inside?
That this person cooked you meals and laughed at your aimless jokes?
Did you never stop to reflect that you once held this body when it was a baby?
That you had upon a time played Barbies and G.I. Joes with them in the backyard?
We once played dress-up-tea-party
You once told me I was annoying for trying to copy your every move
All my childhood I wanted to be invited into your boy’s club
Let me tell you, this was not how I wanted to be included
Your mother had me tutor you in reading comprehension
Comprehend this; you were five whole grades ahead of me
Was that the last time you valued me for more than my vagina?
When did my main characteristic stop being smart and start being pretty?
Maybe I should have tutored you in empathy
You see, where you negated the human
I installed one
I make men out of monsters
My mind can see beyond the cruelty into the shriveled heart that still beats
What you don’t understand is it’s a privilege to call me pretty
No one gets to do that unless I stamp your wrist
Invite you into the club
What you didn’t understand is that this body
My bodyPulsates, vibrates, rockets life like a force
Do you know what it is like to make love?
To and with someone?
A love filled with yearning and creativity?
To hold someone and have them hold you back?
I do
I know that sex is more than genital battle bots
But sex wasn’t really your goal, was it?
Do you know why you had such easy access?
Did you realize that when I didn’t cry out it is because I already knew
No one is coming
No one will protect me
I am alone
You had to have known I was dead long before you sank your claws into the body
My body
You see, there is no world in which I was not dead upon arrival
That my own body didn’t serve as my coffin
I had died so many times before that existence felt like an afterlife
You can’t fuck a corpse that is living if it is already dead
You knew, you had to have known
When you hunted me relentlessly
That I was easy prey
I hadn’t known that I could run
I hadn’t known other monsters hunted at night
I had already been conditioned to normalize the abnormal
In order to survive I learned to sacrifice myself
My upbringing doubled as my burial ground
Before my foot even crossed the threshold you were pushing boundaries
I mistook manipulation for kindness
Intent did not align with content
Your moves were deliberate and calculated in your attempt to divest me of all I was worth
No wonder your lot are called predators
Maybe I got it backwards, it was a dead . . . wait what is the opposite of corpse?
I wish you could be like the others
The ones that can barely look at me
That you would realize that your shame is a shred of dignity
That what was done can never be undone
Part of me is grateful for my mind severing itself from my body
My body has kept a record of every barbaric interaction
It is a nuclear wasteland of unbearable sensation
A home that I never got to inhabit
Descartes didn’t have to make me a dualist
Life did it for me
I envy the hermit crab
When he transforms he gets a new shell
My transformation is the agonizing pain of coming back to life
Coming back into a home that was demolished and having to rebuild inch by torturous inch
So, tell me
What is it like to fuck a living corpse?
And I will tell you what it is like to survive being raped by monstrous men
Death of the Oracle
We are rotting
The putrid sweet scent of ethylene clouds my vision
Upon the altar is an offering of mixed signals and false promisesIt is never wise to give prophecies during the coldest months
I’ve bathed in the spring and chewed the oleander
If only you knew what it cost me to have this sacred disease
My excitement grew when I realized what I could offer
A sapling olive tree
All you had to do was water it
It should have been a sign
When the kid goat didn’t shiverWater sprinkled on it’s back
It should have been a sign when we spilt the goat’s blood that it did not splatter
That it’s organs, liver and spleen, were already cold
There were countless signs
That this odyssey was ill fated
Like some sort of oracle I knew, even then
Even after you showed me your collection of human heads
The Gorgon among them
Soon I would know despair
Desperate for it not to be true I buried my golden crown
An insurance policy
My safety net became my curse
The Greeks have six words for love
Which is far more useful than our one
A hopeless struggle to capture the entirety of human experience
No poet has succeeded yet
Eros was present
Certainly philia
You brought me an offering of agape
Honest as it was
When I looked inside my basket
I found philautia missing
We both had that in short supply
I should have believed you when you revealed who you were
What I could not see was what I refused to see
What I have refused to see a thousand times
You are a Trojan Horse of putrid fantasy
A herald of Phobos
This gnawing empty feeling filling my chest comes from not knowing
Or maybe knowing all too well
The reality of the Fates
“I don’t want to hurt you”
A whispered prophecy
That foretold you knew exactly how you would land the blow
And what is more, you would do nothing to stop it
Outside the temple
Carved upon the entrance
Three maxims give warning
“Know thyself”
“Nothing in excess”
“Surety brings ruin”
But we were fools
You are a child of Hebe and I am a descendant of Parthenope
A combination that speaks to the pitfalls of naivete and madness
Madness that comes from repeated failed attempts to achieve a different outcome
Someone fetch the hellebore
This bitch is about to found a city
Why am I dancing naked in the rain again?
Has no one ever read Greek mythology?
Trying to prevent a prophecy is like pushing a boulder up a hill
It did not work
Not for Kronos, not for Oedipus, not for Persesus
They all failed
Their attempts fruitless
We were both oracles
Before it even began we knew how it would end
Masters of the self-fulfilling prophecy
“If we never try we never fail,” you said
And I ran head first into a bonfire
Like I always do at the first sign of loss
If I had been smart I would have ended it at first blushWhile the blossoms were still closedI didn’t see your beauty then
I was driven by my desire to be plucked and watered
The allure of possibility was too strong“Please,” my echo rang out, “Choose me”And you turned to stone
Maybe if I had been wiser,
Smarter,
More beautiful,
Less needy,
More distant,
Less, more, less, more, more, less
I could wrap myself in this web forever and never find the perfect combination
As if I could ever solve the paradox that is being too much and simultaneously not
enough
It takes a hell of a lot of bravery to love
Bravery I’ve got in spades
But my dear I’m afraid your hand is coming up short
You’d never make it in battle
Even Ares would send you home
Sword between your legs
Riddle me this-
Is it Echo’s fault that Narcissus perishes by a pool, too addicted to his own reflection to notice his last breath?
How can you teach someone to appreciate the gift of an olive tree?
How does it happen that you give someone a shovel to start a garden and instead they dig their own grave?
This is a promise I’ve made to myself time and time again
“Next time I will chose myself”
Without fail I always crumble
I always fail to see my own valueI always fail to know how to love myselfIt’s a tale as old as my trauma
I thought that maybe by loving you I could show you I was worth having
I thought that by being patient and understanding you would come forward
My understanding went ignored
You only had eyes for your dead art
Blind to the pain being caused
Until I was used up and had nothing left except for a fantasy
This is what I foresee:
My head cut offFlowers blooming from the sever
Me picking up my hem and guiding my headless body to a stream
Washing the blood away
With time I will mend
My head will grow back
Maybe for once I will learn
That with lack of promise comes the death of patience