Your Bird of Paradise Dead Like the Madonna
By Ruby Ferris
I was shooting birds and all manner of flight
began
falling
there were angels there were parakeets there
was the sun, manatee slick ; residuous in my hands ; it could have been
the core of an unruly girl it could have been the core of a girl
raised on the water of bright reactivity and exhaustion ; raised
on the aluminum biosphere of a chocolate coin
or
on the animal built
on nerves outcast by circumcision or on God’s landfill or on ; or on ; or atop
all the psychic currency
built high on the bodies of innocents like Sodom and Gomorrah on; on; atop
of unwanted touch..
Birds who spoke fell from flight. They cried
Children of God why ? do you claim you were never born ? Why ? Do you claim you were
born in a suit and your ; subordinates in a straightjacket?
Girls wore bird; feathered flesh made of subordination they; wore aubergine bruises
in the hush of their hair; they varnished
the sound of their own violet blood
until it was no longer violet but colorless colorless in the body and also prickled atop the breast,
Glaxosmithkline filled up the breast;
they stuck Dasani bottles under the skin
and some girls grew pansies over the scar of their matrilineage,
and some of these wounds became
necrotic ; terribly necrotic;
their unhealings were
forever areola pink.
underskin and overcoat alike; we set up
Dasani bottles like urns. our. relatives died of cancer and the caps we inlaid
; beneath our nipples it
hurt terribly; yet skinning the underflesh we pooled our torsos; together;
and began dancing alongside the small cities outside of Detroit,
Chicago; we beat ourselves with
radiation. aluminum and; made wallets out of “Cheetos bags” and;
in the stomachs of our mothers they found prehistoric plastic, our
mothers ages us backwards and claimed to have only
eaten us so we could be safe inside for two thousand years; for
each year since Christ; but,, God,, to mothers
no one listens.
someone threatened to take us away from our mothers we feared
they would cut our cunts into doll parts and so,
We cut ourselves anyway away. vortex God I’ll tell you.
We protected our mothers.
we loved plastic because plastic was what
our mothers made us eat at lunchtime.; our souls became grassy radioactive
beams only we could see,
they called us schizoid but kept us full of water to flush out
the plastic we were named after
protagonists in plastic’s favorite postapocalyptic novel and
protagonists in our mother’s favorite shade of plastic, we
clingwrapped new desires for our husbands
and psychoanalysts we said,;
Why don’t I pretend to be Elizabeth Holmes in bed? Why don’t you prosecute me for
taking your blood and replacing it with plastic?
Our husbands called us schizoid or borderline. They said
I would rather pretend to shoot you like a carrier pigeon the. Very last one because. You
Are my dove but dirtier. you. Have always been covered in petroleum and all I want to do
is. See your blood shattered alongside rivulets of petroleum and you. pigeon. will be an
heiress and. You will go septic and I will wear your feathers in my new wife’s hair.
And we said OK.
In the birdbath we fell from flight ; in the landfill always
germinated by our touch, our green souls sandpaper stripped mollified
by man’s gunlike touch,;
and when our mothers hurt us so badly we bled oil and laid
in the ground who bled oil we
remained plump as night underground. We cut
our skin on the lack of light and blessed the
soil with our biopsies; our biopsies the lip;
stains on a thousand Dasani bottles they guarded us from genocide. we
planted our skin and up sprouted soft trash our
first joy, awakened we
realized we
would eventually fuck plastic.
Government fathers said
we would eventually know God but officially.
speaking this was no longer promised and
if you believed it too hard or if you killed yourself
for the earth you were
schizoid
or
you were selfish (respectively)
Shooting birds helps them leave in a
shoebox or shoved wing-wrapped into a Dasani bottle. We make
all the animals into plastic, God made us in his image. We
wear rubber shoes to walk into the killing field where. Bugs and rabbits hide inside
of
empty tubes of St. Ives Apricot Scrub and Durex wrappers when. the wildfires burn off
their eyelashes they ; replace them with branded feathers,
sublime logomania as aubergine as the deepest earth.
WITH GREAT LOVE
by Ruby Ferris
she didn’t like me.
for some reason
I thought it was sweet
there were times with her in this life when eyes too were cat-marbled and
Splashed into sockets seemingly without care, and
everyone saw them splashed like overripe lemons surpassing the earth’s rim
eyes could be caught and slipped down the throat like oysters
she took me to parties where i wore watercolored glass eyes
That operated on command
like that story by Lucia Berlin
where the young girl moves to the southwest and her husband irons her
hair chars it until all the incense is released and chokes them both. And he chokes her, I always
presumed.
he gets her pregnant and leaves her, so expectable, but no one
Expects it to happen to them
There were times in this life when she sat on the bone that had no joint,
Thinking she might make a new joint
she sought out the most breakable color,
God had nothing to do with what happened in the Gulf of Mexico
Someone said at a party, pincushioned tight,
someone immediately realized it was wrong
though someone also realized that it was wrong for me to laugh at
Splashing God down to the hem of my dress and zagging Him like a Brother
through the seams of my ticklish skin, I was laughing,
I was never liked at these parties.
but our bodies were simply so funny, lover,
by this time our bodies were nearly halfway plastic
and slashed with primary colors that would appear so
Godlike to a baby that He would go blind and so
garish to a woman that she would catch laughter like a
pregnant bird
in her jaws and she would get laughter’s ballerina
bones stuck between incisors and would be laughing like ellipses like a fatal hiccup
She didn’t like me, but it was never about being liked, it
Was about the gulf of mexico and how water balances oil.
These days no one stops talking about boundaries
the balance between care and hatred, spit and
hydrocarbon, lover, the balance is always working hard at keeping
it tepid
It’s the same as it always has been but her fist has grown and
she strikes me to the ground
she dances me through the forest with a shotgun
her fist has grown and the birds are choked, they are crushed and the dirty grey blood
seeps into the earth and makes our oil
I want to let it splash over the rim but it drives her car
And where would we go? And where would we go without it?
In my dreams she has butchered every hen
And my face is pressed to the ground
she doesn’t like me, there is iron coming in and out of my
tear ducts. she’s replaced my glass eyes with rubber. And there is blood as playful as water. I
want to lap it out of the soil and pick my teeth with hen feathers
but if I did,
the world would go silent and the wheels would stop turning but
What if I did?
What if I ran my teeth red with each drop until I was tired and fat
with it?
what if I blinded her and opposed separation and sucked up the
garnet petroleum?
and What if I did? What if married oil and water?
About the author
Ruby Ferris is an interdisciplinary poet and writer. Born and raised in the city of Chicago, she is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.