Candice Wuehle
pressed
i will will the floor until it is a door. Shut
up while i murder architecture, while i
make the umbrella irrelevant. i know more
than anyone else about protection, about
pinning an inverted bouquet to the wall with an
industrial nail to make vanish the distance between you
and dust. Botanical strappado, sun as averted
eye. This is difficult; will
is not touching the petals
while you watch them shrink
in on themselves until they have lost enough
life to be the same shade as a living
thumb. All the power in the world
can't make a cathedral
anything but a room. i will spit
in the rain to prove it.
cryptobeauty // giantess
From inside the center
of my back, i grew an extra
arm. i tipped the top
of my breast b
one upward until it fixed
first with the light like leaves
in the canopy's upmost layer. Twilit, touched
first in the dark.
i tipped until the blades of each
shoulder met at my extra
elbow. Crook. The limb
wasn't my own
arm, but i let the biomass grow
because i know the clinging
root of an orchid really looks like the body and the head of a ball
python, its orbuculum-mouth unhinged to accept the largess
of the future. Natural magician, i
believe in abundance
. i believe in eating
until i bring silver
and gold back to life. Cryptobeauty
is the belief that it is easiest to be beautiful if the audience agrees
you are not and
it is easiest to be rich when you are also strange and
it is easiest to be rich in a strange currency and
it is best if you can eat
the money of others. Look,
you can spend this currency on what everyone doesn't agree with. Follow me at my
own risk, i'm brave as a heroine in a grave
yard. i'm inventing new lunches.
i'm not afraid to insist on
an extra meal
just to feed my beauty, to
grow the arm
that will wave as i leave
this world
and that will wave as i enter
the next. vince, what isn't a gesture
worth? i will set my hair on fire
to send the most spectacular
smoke signal. You are going to know what i am saying.
You are going to understand me.
vince, make a list of everything i will eat:
THE LIPSTICK THE MOUTH THE TELEPHONE THE SMOKE WITHIN THE SCRYING
STONE THE WAX THE HONEY THE HIVE THE HAIR THE TAN LINES THE MIRROR
THE MOUTH THE STAIN FROM THE MOUTH THE JELLY THE TRAIL OF THE
GASTROPOD THE LIGHT THE DARK THE OPENING OF THE CAVE THE COLOR DARK
THE COLOR SILVER THE COLD THE COLOR GOLD THE STICKINESS OF TAPE THE
INTERSTITIAL KISS THE SAP THE SKIMMED FAT THE FAT THE SECRETION OF THE
LIPS THE OIL THE EXTRA SKIN THE DUST THE PROFANE DUST THE SACRED DUST
THE EXTRA STARS THE DUST
About Candice Wuehle
Candice Wuehle is the author of the full-length collection BOUND (Inside the Castle Press, August 2018) and the chapbooks VIBE CHECK (Garden-door Press, 2017), EARTH*AIR*FIRE*WATER*ÆTHER (Grey Books Press, 2015) and curse words: a guide in 19 steps for aspiring transmographs, (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). She is originally from Iowa City, Iowa and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Candice currently resides in Lawrence, Kansas where she is a Chancellor's Fellow at The University of Kansas. Find her at: candicewuehle.com.