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industrial girl

metal / welded bones / mouths bolted / broad, open / industrial girl, silverbellied

 

ticking. timer. your analog christening. touch. gray. metallic tongues. your body is open, unbloodied / hardware cannot bleed.

hand on the body, neck, mouth, tongue. hypothesis in motion. motive. are you

            his motive?

house alive, eating whole sections

                        of your metal

            bones, skeleton; once baked: WD-40 over salt.

 

your plastic hair

tied around                  his wrist, not yours not his hers          you swallow.

red button                                behind                                                 the ear.

            machines are not programmed                       to cry.

 

a Wife, a Mother, a House Service.

 

coded into softheaded bodies carved of stone, metal, alloy ingot hardware.

            iron sewn into                         a burgundy dress.

 

red dresses only, to swallow                           the taste of blood.

 

            who are you?                                                  maiden who cannot bleed.

 

industrial girl, silverbellied

 

girls no longer

 

                                                                                                                        bleed.

Red Glare

"When Pat told me the story of the house, it felt shattered. The story had ruptured inside of her, a thing punctured and bled. Broken in all the ways a thing can be. I had wondered if there were parts of it that she couldn’t remember. Maybe some things she had blocked out, or been erased, or things she had been spared. Perhaps there is no whole, undissected story. A house is a house is a house, until it isn’t."

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