Epiphanies do arrive. Dispatches of earnest nonfiction press forth. Within us, fierce awakenings toward feedback begin to bloom. The self, a curious poison of sorts, can feel almost botulistic. And what of closed-off domestic spirits? A liking for arrangements of stone-gray kittens. Rooms that hum with taxidermy. The luminous aftermath of galleries set alight, a kinetic afterglow. Demolition derbies. Acne-colored smoke spilling from manifolds. Drivers urged to stay enshrouded until it’s prudent to exit.
It all crashed and burned. It carried the aura of stern control, almost Gestapo-like. It carried the stamp of doomsday prophecy. It felt less like a tremor and more like momentum—life, a wispy thread at times, intensified by favorable hair days. In us, an aesthetic largely sustained by serotonin stabilizers. Our inherited genetic endowments. A skewed ladder of DNA. A tongue’s tombstone nestled between chin and nose.
Here lies a satellite view of nations that resemble prize-fighter ears. The square of a blood cell. Guano dusting ancient rubble. The freezer-burn palate of the salt flats. Here, footage of combat with lime-green blood spatter glimpsed through night-vision scopes. Black silhouette, black silhouette, black silhouette, looping through the feed.
As though sadness could be softened or moisturized. A sense of estrangement, like a ventriloquist’s hand finding its way into the dressing room after a brutal set. Tacit nuance. All the negative space between our lips. These are the weapons we wield. Hands gripping rigid bodies. Flashes of cold chrome. Checkered flags. Fuzzy dice.
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From Wet Manual by Eric Amling, now available from Blush.
