Rust of the scarab kept under her tongue

Here are seven pieces inspired by the hazy almost-memory of an old maybe-Italian western vampire film, like the sapphic psychosexual fascination of a Franco or Rollin refracted through scorched stone and saguaro expanses.

Coracomantes: "In antiquity, persons who foretold events from their observations of crows."

Rot of the scorpion: the venom that poisons but doesn’t kill, a burgeoning transmitted by touch and tooth that carries writhing death; Saint Teresa in qliphoth.

Honey-colored knife: a flush of warmth, to cool; a flow of amber, to still; a glow of gold, to tarnish.

Feel more serratedly the violence of texture: an endlessly-rising cognizance of the omnipresent assault of embodiment, of the indwelling and ever-projecting menace and harm of which all things are constituted.

Rust of the scarab kept under her tongue: the coursing of change, completed and unending. The radiant red of endless night, and how it quenches, and how it turns to ash.

The justices of the chittering pass millionfold judgment: weighed in the balance by the speakers in the dark, and the damnation of acceptance by those which are other.

Infinite death in all directions: There is no escape.

released August 4, 2023