CULPABILITY OF THE CHALICE
his skin was full of rain / as he rose he rained on me / birds and wing / the bird that fell
like an anchor from the eave of my house / eve needed the man of clay / i tell him to
remember he is sensory / because he was trained in the military / to make his hands work out
of clay /
he tells me there is no serpent of the nous / i cover one eye with two fingers / i blew air /
gentle and soft as feathers / and made him into two / i sewed him on my back so i could fly
up through my mother / without wings / but silver hands / shiny forks / skull sutures fused
❧
i don’t believe in the concurrent assessment of two children / not on the same table /
sometimes i hear children in my house / i see them sitting together like corn leaves taking
life from the field / sometimes i think it’s cherubim / sui generis and tutelary / they chant
something i have never heard before / the messages of the sea / codified like braille / my feet
earthed / my fingers touch them like blindness does
❧
i get called to jury duty / i feel like i have been conscripted for war / the nurse flings
a contraceptive pamphlet on my bed after i birth my third child
❧
i don’t believe in retribution / for what they have done has already happened to them /
i don’t want to remember things / not in a courthouse / he gives me a summons
and an identification number / he wants me to judge a person / in less than three days / to
play with meeples and the dice / there are no stepping stones or lighthouses / the lawyer
and psychiatrist are more manipulative than the criminal
❧
i am not a reductionist
❧
i take him to his room / i switch off the lights / he sits on his bed / i kneel in front of him / i
forewarn / when your daddy yells and picks at your skin / you shut down / shut down and
say yes / my son asks / why did you close the door / i don’t want him to hear / this is a very
important secret / when he picks at you / it’s not your fault / pretend he’s right and sneak
away
when he’s not looking / i place my hands on his shoulders to stop him from rocking like a
boat in a storm
❧
i hold his face / my hands are his fingers / an open cup / i tell him / i love him but i love you /
my son sets into my palms / wets their leaves / thicker than blood / my mouth covers his ear
like a shell / i shouldn’t be telling you / i stroke his other ear / i only look through his ear
because no one can look straight into the eyes of god / i want to keep you safe /
do you understand / i don’t stand up until he nods / he’ll change / he nods / he just needs
time / certitude in the eyes of children gives faith to adults who don’t believe / don’t ever
give anyone your soul when they’re hungry / only my mouth moves / alalia / they will carry /
you all away / he nods again
❧
i switch on the red light of the lampshade his daddy made for him / out of the rear brake light
of his car / i fix his bedside table and straighten up his journal / cataleptic finger on my lips /
i open the door
❧
i knew i was wrong / but i did not have a right / to make them both men
❧
the more i cried and told my mother what i felt / i can’t remember what she threw / i can only
see her face and her arms / all white / a blank wall / that my father later wallpapered /
aversive stimuli and a cold war
❧
she lies over me in the sea / where there is a shipwreck / black iron anchor like a chamber /
rooms of a coffin or a heart / she is lying on top of me / grey and rotted for this drowning
happened when i was five years old / i am lying under her / we lie in colonial clothes / my
eyes are still partially lucid / but my mouth and my teeth / a cracked stone fence / a castle
parapet / breaking under the earth / we are kissing each other / our teeth interlocking / my
tongue
is driving like an arrow / the basal ganglia spirals like a snake / i kept feeling that my son
was with me but i couldn’t see him anymore / when my husband found me he expected
that i had perished / their bodies are heavier than me / i am a light
THE FERRIS WHEEL
“He’d have God for his father & never want joy.”
—William Blake, from “The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young”
my mother sweeping with a broom in a fairytale house / witch’s broomstick / if poor little
boys got stuck in chimneys / flavorsome bodies / for mothers and fathers could not carry
them /
the soot / mother’s first sorrow / my redemption and a circular broom as dark as the sun /
bristles are harsh and scrub like people do / the ferris wheel / sailors in the carriages /
catching a glimpse of the beam near the rocks / a wishing well in the city / floor of golden
stars / or chicken claws /
❧
coins in the phalluses of gods / while cleaning them they got stuck / especially the twisted
ones / stairs up a lighthouse / separating the nodes of the spine / claustrophobia of the song
without
the dance / the children of hamelin were sold / the pied piper took them to a cave or a river /
some don’t believe in the promise of the military / the promised land /
❧
elijah wanted to die under a broom tree / she touched him / gave him hearth cake and the
grains of sugar of her skin / he walked to horeb / tree branches / bristle and bough / vintage
hairbrush / phalluses can be like trees and blossom in the spring / the blossoms have opened
their smiles now / i have sped this slow / the base of trees can look like huts / held by the
shoulders of roots / the gates of caves like the strings of a banjo / my husband played one for
me / on top of a hill / his door wide open / his banjo is covering his whole chest / strings of
the harp / strings
of the passion / my head inside / my heel stuck on the outside / we will marry on bluegrass /
dance like the gospels
❧
my father showed me a document / i told him i’m not a lawyer and am liable to
misunderstand / he waited / i unfolded the paper / it was ancient / i understood the pictures
of vessels / jugs
and cauldrons / i knitted my melancholy with needles / the morning star and the one at dusk /
god and the antichrist curled like a wafer chocolate stick / rondo or a caduceus / a motif /
❧
etymology of blake / dark skin / pale hair / son of lake / my father told me he would visit me
on friday / frigg / teutonic goddess / day of venus / conjugal love and the song of songs /
hieros gamos / and my songs of innocence /
❧
he was surprised when i told him it wasn’t all his fault / i said sometimes we send a second
boy when the first one is already stuck up the chimney / and then they both die /
❧
it was simply a marriage that didn’t work / my mother told how much she spied on me
when i kissed him /
❧
they both believed in god but no one believes me when i tell them there is a woman who
looks like a star and can fly /
❧
nietzsche was right / we suffocate / until we learn to swallow / our everyday / amor fati /
sobriety / the drink of mendacity / my mother said my skin color was green / the poison
of verdigris and absinthe / the green fairy /
❧
he turned my head to my plate at the table / i have to admit / i keep wandering around /
looking at everyone else / he was very angry with me and slammed down my plate / he
warned me
like the father / he was worried my head was in the clouds / he pulled my hour into half /
by jabbing his fingers in my food / like i dug my fingers into my son to prevent
him from getting run over by a car /
❧
i saved his life that day /
❧
black coffin / sealed vessel / lead coffin of alchemy / this is what it means to dress and bed
in soot / my husband / a young boy / squeezable enough / aged four or five / i looked into his
face / my son / and made his half into the hour / i write and drive / on a road to arcadia /
euphoria
of the amphora /
❧
i wrote essays for lecturers / persuasive texts to show them how well they convinced me of
their own thoughts / they were very accomplished / they wrote their own books / if i told
them
what i really thought / i would never have graduated /
❧
i had to clean out all the spiders from the bedroom i slept in as a child / i had to convert them
like people convert money when they travel / there were shelves there / receipts everywhere
and band-aid wrappers / colored paper and half-finished visual art pieces /
❧
the silence of half an hour feels like it’s never going to end / i find it interesting that my child
shows me her little finger and says i don’t feel any more pain on it / vicarious feeling is not
the same thing as feeling / i saw a child / she glanced at the clock / half its face / i notice one
eye is missing / then the eye of providence / eye of horus / she is almost made of porcelain /
❧
there was something from my old marriage / she wrote instructions for me on living /
it was written in different languages / even her writing was careless / when i asked her to
teach me how to make lace from string / she moved the pegs and string too fast / she was
proud
of being more intricate than me / she handed down her wedding ring / but i never discard
wedding rings / nor / especially / husbands /
❧
i kiss him / kami / paradoxical path / paradisiacal japanese garden / filtered lenses make
scenes temporal / he swallows my acid / the aborted living / people suspended in my sleep /
he is waiting on the shore / they trust without question / the boil inside iron bellies /
and how i throw my woven bodies on the right side of the boat / ascend / walking
on me like a tightrope when i’m cataleptic /
❧
i have no safety net /
Annie Blake is an Australian writer and divergent thinker. She is a wife and mother of five children. She started school as an EAL student and was raised and continues to live in a multicultural and industrial location in the West of Melbourne. Her research aims to exfoliate branches of psychoanalysis and metaphysics. She is currently focusing on in medias res and arthouse writing. She enjoys exploring symbology and the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of dreams. She is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne and Existentialist Society in Melbourne. You can visit her on annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au and on Facebook.