Cake
In one episode of the anime Romantic Killer, a slice of strawberry cake is seen skating across the floor. The voiceover explains that because cockroaches are “unseemly,” the cockroach in the scene has been swapped with a dessert. The cake is not to be seen, even if it isn’t the real thing, but a representation, once removed. Once, an aunt told me to put a bra on beneath the t-shirt I changed into after work, for my cake showed, two dots, if I was to join the men in the living room—my uncle, step-father, cousins—for primetime TV. “Husbands and sons,” she called them. Cold, my cake bristles; warm, they soften, turn slumbrous. Despite their wishy-washy way of appearing, they did not pass unnoticed. The objection is not to cake, not to what cake represents, but to the imprints on a piece of fabric from which ideas may be conjured. Cake is delicious—like the ripe, plump strawberries erect on a bed of rich cream—but denied airtime, until they turn into feeding instruments.
Narcissus
The plant blooms—its crown tugs
its sepals. Under their weight,
the blossom droops, as if to deflect
any advances, tucking in its ovary,
wasting its pollen on the mud.
Likewise, the youth matures
but turns his face away—
He will not concede when pursuers
coax him, “You are too beautiful
to remain celibate.”
Does a flower ever escape from bees
or a hand, like mine, ready to
tilt its head up and rub the stamens?
I get the mythmakers’ sentiment:
recalling the boy who will not
love me back, I, too,
would cast him as a character
that turns vegetable,
would make him lose his favor
with the gods and make him lose it
into the water. I, too, would rather
he fell for himself,
or better yet, died beating
his chest black and blue, alone.
The post My Nipples Are a Public Safety Hazard appeared first on Electric Literature.
