Drolleries

by Cassidy McFadzean

  Christ’s wound is the open mouth

  of the grinning face emoji, lips

  dripping Smucker’s red raspberry jam.

  In the tale of Nastagio degli Onesti,

  marriage meant a knight hunting

  the ungrateful woman, hounds

  nipping her thighs until he flung

  her heart to their waiting teeth.

  The punishment repeated each Friday.

  Like Saint Michael slaying Lucifer

  ad nauseum, the action becomes

  a monster itself, a kaleidoscope

  gone awry, early ’90s Magic Eye.

  Aventurine lends the adoration

  of shepherds a glittering backdrop

  as old ladies’ swollen feet press

  against leather sandals on Spanish

  streets, thyroids like pelicans’ gullets

  spitting phlegm over concrete.

  One night, I dreamed my skin peeled

  away, shedding a sunburnt chrysalis

  on our bedding, never fully drying

  in this humidity. The peppery scent

  of the botanical gardens mixed

  with the tree-of-heaven’s semen

  stink, and followed us to the subway

  like piss-dripping bags of garbage.

  THE WAY

  If the forest opened itself to me,

  how deeply would I follow it inside?

  Or if you dropped pebbles to follow,

  would I allow you to invite me in,

  to enter your home, to use the toilet,

  let me be enwrapped in a stranger’s arms?

  Nearly two minutes in, I remembered

  I’d forgotten about rape, mislaid

  the notion of fear, prompted by the man

  clad in Lycra shorts jogging toward me,

  body sweat a glaze. His gaze surveyed me.

  Distant beasts brayed to the rhythm of his

  ample breathing. I found my SMS

  wouldn’t send. So if I fell surrounded

  by trees and Nature – so be it – released

  of physical being I felt it all: fear, lust,

  a body weighed down with plastic beads,

  whose shadow flitted past hickory.

  The matter was taken from me, a child’s,

  and seized. I embraced my slumping to see

  where the unfamiliar posture would lead.

  A pale cicada curled at my feet.

  I imagined the life I still wanted:

  my cursor blinking on a dizzied screen.

  In a world that’s mainly insects, did I move

  in it too heavily? I fished a fly

  from a cobweb and it flew into me,

  squandered freedom colliding with atoms

  as we all do. In the forest’s gentle clearing,

  a dog-walker found me wandering

  and helped me find the way. We looked

  over the graveyard and each blotch she read

  on my face she saw as brush strokes – not wings.

  I turned back at the cemetery’s gate,

  and lost myself in the forest again.

  TO FIND A GHOST FOREST

  Search first for traces of charcoal

  blackening the pathway, trees felled

  for fuel where livestock once grazed.

  Unearth clues obscured in old maps

  and estate records, spectres of shadow

  woods archived in the king’s Domesday.

  The phantoms cling to honeysuckle,

  holly, common cow-wheat, haunting

  hacked-off limbs of coppiced trees.

  Bluebells mark woodland turned

  to pasture, a ring of hanging heads

  announcing the forest’s neat graves.

  GHOSTING

  If I wear enough concealer

  will I disappear completely,

  blend in with the mirrors,

  assume a new personality?

  I saw a real-life mummy

  and put its JPEG on my laptop screen.

  Now my computer’s haunted,

  a MacBook-of-the-dead

  whose powers and spells

  I’ll harness to guide me.

  Give me the strength, Lindow Man,

  for ghosting this life:

  so tired am I of never picking

  the burned piece of cake

  in the druid’s bannock ritual,

  of missing the mistletoe,

  of each night’s party ending

  with “Dancing on My Own.”

  CLINTING IN THE WOODS

  I found a pair of velvet-covered antlers.

  Three fingers reached from an open palm

  still throbbing with platelet’s hot breath,

  grave markings perched on snow.

  I clasped the shed horns, abandoned

  by some migrating buck, triple brow tine

  doubtless cast from a fervent rut, and slid

  the pulsing things into my rucksack,

  clanging against my canteen and matches.

  A slit was cut in their toes, the split-hoofed

  ungulates, seams cleaving in thorny keratin

  like threads sewn in wool. In my embroidered

  tabi boots, I returned to my winter cabin,

  sinking into the crust of my morning steps.

  The antlers battered my flesh a bluish hue,

  my tender skin stinging when I undressed,

  bathwater steaming as my fire crackled

  and spat. I sighed and relaxed, conjuring

  what I’d once read of the artifact’s medicinal

  qualities, and examined it under cobalt flame.

  Finding the antlers adequate specimens,

  I pressed my lips against one thick branch,

  tongued the velvet sheathing, and chewed.

  I swallowed the fibre as I entered my water,

  and within moments, felt tufts of fine hair

  as pedicles grew. I was fated, bone collector,

  to wander under this same weird moon.

  SAGA

  Allow me to sing you

  the song of my people,

  says the common snipe

  from Hallgrímskirkja’s steeple.

  The arctic blue fox

  has skin for days.

  We removed his sleek fur

  with a sharpened blade.

  From crown to chandelier

  the reindeer’s reign passed.

  We sucked antler’s marrow

  and poured a bronze cast.

  So many men gathered

  in the circle’s three rows.

  A Britney song was on.

  Farmers came to blows.

  THE NECROPANTS

  The pair of skin slacks was well hung,

  in want of a sorcerer to wear them.

  Like pantyhose of moulded silicon,

  two legs stood behind glass – but

  the fabric was epidermis, covered

  in hosiery runs of hair that ran

  their length, the skin still malleable,

  loosened from the flesh and sewn.

  Widely rumoured, rarely known,

  we gaped before the Necropants.

  Though stitching a pair is difficult

  even for gifted magicians,

  many cunning folk have heard

  of the tool to make gold grow,

  the nábrók of ancient grimoires.

  We know the sorcerer who wishes

  to wear this eerie disguise must first

  make a pact with a living man’s lower

  limbs and lap. But what depraved

  mind would sanction any old wizard

  to dig up his corpse? He must flay it,

  careful not to make holes or scratches,

  keeping trousers intact from feet

  to waistband, allowing another

  to prance forth wearing his legs.

  What soul could rest knowing

  another wore his sk
in? And worse,

  the sorcerer’s work was not yet

  finished. He must steal a coin

  from a poor widow at Christmas,

  or Easter, or Whitsun, and slip it –

  dare I say – into the empty scrotum.

  The magic is such that the Necropants

  will draw coins from living souls,

  and his crotch will never be empty

  when he scratches it. One catch

  lets us stomach this perversion:

  if the owner fails to gift them before

  his mortal passing, his skin will crawl

  with lice. He must drop his trousers

  before he dies. Once a willing heir

  is identified, this new pervert steps

  into the right leg before the wizard

  exits the left. The task is finished;

  his crotch will pay dividends.

  FORTUNE

  Previews for movies we’ve already seen comfort

  like digging for a stone I know by feel,

  engraved with my fortune, hand-picked.

  In the night, ice cracks in the AC, waking us.

  I turn the dial and hear women yelling

  in the street, then a car turning into the alley.

  In morning fatigue, my vision settles

  on the veins of a woman bagging our groceries

  at Bulk Barn. A bulging star, she brandishes

  something other-worldly implanted in her.

  We want to be stranger than what we are.

  I pay what we owe and enter the idling car.

  WITCHES’ SABBATH

  In Goya’s reconstructed black room,

  me and thirty kindergarteners

  watch a dog drown. Call me Asmodea,

  the female devil who exposes

  the inside of houses like this one,

  frescoes stripped from walls.

  Domestic taxidermy had us

  hovering as I gestured to the life

  we were fabricating together,

  our every hope lost to the fates,

  their scissors cutting what threads of life

  I had spooled around my finger.

  We transformed into two figures

  bludgeoning each other with clubs

  in the deaf man’s house, X-rays

  revealing a grassy meadow we’d lazed

  in once. Now I’m a snout whispering

  in your ear as you, old man, lean

  on your staff. I’m the manola

  who, underneath a layer of paint,

  appears bare-headed. Veil shed,

  I lean on a doorway I might still enter.

  I am Judith beheading Holofernes,

  the reticent girl transfixed in a chair,

  patiently awaiting my initiation

  as the cloaked goat’s lips part in song.

  I’m the monster I knew I was all along.

  MIND READER

  Nothing was enough: spilled

  salt you tossed over your shoulder,

  bedstraw I threw in the air.

  Spices struck bodies in the bar,

  and I asked what I was to you:

  two mirrors against each other

  forming a chamber of reflections

  that wouldn’t let you through.

  DREAM INTERPRETATION

  I dream we veer off a bridge,

  the rivers crossed travelling

  the Mississippi, the Missouri.

  She can’t abort the memory

  a prairie billboard reads.

  Petals fall from the birthday lilies

  you bought me, dragonflies

  on the windshield hardened to tar.

  A quiet murmuring, the woman

  on the radio describes a plot

  of land lush with greenery.

  She took a hoe to her earth

  and dug up insulation, raked carpet,

  her shovel clanging against tin,

  breaking sheets of cloudy glass.

  Her fertile land was a dumping

  ground, duped by the man

  who sold it to her. I dreamed

  we dreamed of starting over,

  of tilling the earth, seeding it,

  cultivating corrugated sheets,

  automobile chassis, rebar, green

  glass dump with sulphide flower.

  Two gravestones fixed in earth,

  missing names. They waited for us.

  CARVE OUT THE EYEHOLE

  I kiss that cold space on his cheek,

  a corner of light. I’m on top

  so it feels like I’ve got the dick.

  Feels good, right?

  Waves froth up and rise inside me.

  I close one eye and see

  the bridge of my nose,

  as if looking out of a face.

  Rolling hills are Stone City, Iowa,

  trees an artichoke’s leaves.

  Texture brings me closer to a tumble,

  to absolution. A church

  both rubber and angular is what paint is.

  Art out of some renaissance brain

  but anachronistic, rounded edges

  of history and the night

  made of dark pigment and light.

  He grinds up on me. He smells

  like coffee. What is the etymology

  of Dilly Bar? We go to a DQ

  with a hand-painted sign, order Dickel

  Whisky for the stupid rhyme.

  I walk home before the thunder

  and take pictures of police cruisers,

  the park’s grass raised

  to invisible borders on our bodies.

  I pull often to the smooth meat of my brain

  grating against carpet fibres.

  These twisting fabrics veer within,

  silk and static I feel

  in my gut, flipped. My knees double

  over and fold into self. Love,

  I love my body. It helps me see.

  ON REMIXING VELÁZQUEZ’S LAS MENINAS

  Picasso’s drawings prefigure Crumb:

  prostitute’s legs perpetually spread, breasts

  perfectly bulbous, a failure of anatomy

  in eroticism. A tinny orgy ricochets

  from plastic receivers as I approach a couple

  sharing one device. Polyamory turns

  unsavoury so we part at the gored horse

  of Lascaux, the massacre proto-Guernican,

  grotesque as the kisses of women roaming

  the Ramblas with Zara bags. This is me

  becoming more and more angular, viewing

  Picasso’s Las Meninas remixes, a portrait

  of infant Margarita, heroine of realism

  here transformed into triangles, circles, lines.

  Every iteration takes Velázquez further

  from representation until another angle

  emerges – it’s the sister who interests him,

  she who presents candlestick and flame.

  In this act of bestowing, the light is the focus

  of each frame, its viewers captivated until

  we are all monochrome. Picasso abandons

  Velázquez for the dovecote on his balcony:

  splayed feathers, pointed beaks, incessant

  coos. The Bay of Cannes’s distant view.

  REAL MADRID

  The spring I was only drawing cups and pentacles,

  the gold leaf wore off my laurel necklace, metal

  plating underneath. Palacio Real’s upholstery

  matches carpets matching curtains of Gasparini’s

  room, where the king performed against blue silk walls

  the ceremony of getting dressed. Rococo follows

  penchant for chinoiserie: plaster foliage against wooden

  frames as Atlas bears his globe of constellations,

  Spain no comfort for my Taurus sun, made queasy

  by swinging pendulums, Aurora gliding across the ceiling.


  Posit this: if I were a guest at Maria Cristina’s wedding

  to the king would I panic and leave? One place

  setting out of formation, chair disturbed the slightest bit.

  That’s me creaking across wooden floors to the exit.

  I’m the Real Madrid: holy water resting in a conch,

  no food here but for the soul, a woman’s matchstick-

  patterned blouse a fire hazard to our Airbnb’s five

  locked doors. In this exquisite stucco room of harpies,

  pairs of winged infants bear the insignia of Maria Luisa’s

  female order. They reprieve Zeus on his eagle,

  the throne room’s violence, ticking of a distant clock,

  Medici lions with their marble ball. Outside the palace

  walls, I deal a new spread of swords and wands,

  the Spanish Marseilles marking conflict and loss.

  STUDY OF A TORSO

  When pictures of decapitated journalists

  started appearing in my Twitter feed,

  their heads lolled in the dirt cartoonishly.

  I’ve been reading the news

  so much it’s entered me.

  In the night I dream I’m raped

  in my bed when my husband’s away,

  the pain in my abdomen so sharp

  it wakens me. In a dark room

  my iPhone leads me to the law student

  who didn’t know she’d been attacked

  until she viewed it on screen.

  She’d said anything to clear his name.

  When I drive my husband to Mercy

  the third time in as many weeks,

  ice obscures the windshield.

  I never drive and he makes me brake

  so he can get out to clear the ice away,

  blood streaking the glass,

  globules of flesh smeared on the seat.

  A bloody doorknob greets our neighbour,

  circular saw still plugged in on the lawn.

  I dreamed of it for weeks: his screams,

  how much worse it might have been.

  I’d asked if I should go back to look

  for his fingers, unaware he held them

  still attached in hand.

  How he’d get me off without them

  flashed through my mind even then.

  In a room full of brains

  I feel the heat of synapses.

  I am a flesh marionette, off balance

  waiting for the next catastrophe.

  A weapon wails from the yard.

  I pick my fingers off the floor,

  not knowing I had it in me.