this old house as something still blooming
such dust — these dandelion seeds orb
my vision cobwebbed. optometrists say
if i see lightning or spiders or anything haunted
my retina will tear & i may lose sight
instantly for now it is loose sight
i say to myself; it is nothing; nothingsight
a ghost story in itself let me tell you
about my favorite genres as a child
my pet newts became loofas
& i worried i did it to them
with my asthma like the airlack of me
covered their small bodies in enough filia
for them to float even in their lake-burial i’d like to be buried
in the lake, too; i’d like for my grave
to be a lost & found; i’d like my grave to be a dollhouse
replica of this memoryhaus i’m building
from scratch how many death wishes can i have
while still fearing death anyways, genres
i love horror & that’s why i want you
to put me in the walls let me lose sight
for lack of anything to see just dark
just some campy print of purple lemurs
mixed with holly berries
i’ve only been told i’m going to hell once
but many times purgatory i take back my baptism
anyways let me go where i’d like
this old house as gushblood
everyone clowns ;;;
wide-lipped, a cyst on me
not mine bursts blood unmenstrual
no mooning whatsoever,
no miming, no teardrop
open mouth with no sound
i hope to ghost in this way,
curve my breaths
loved-one shaped, become something
i’m not
the first house of my life, my father
clowned in conehead
my mother clowned
graveyard shift
i clowned downward
toward the carpet
with dog, clowning
thirst
everything bleeds out
over time & i’m here to
stop it ;;;
i cauterize where possible
not with fire, but legend
then ritual
where there is house
there is a sort of god
the second house of my life
held real clown
birthdays & teeth stained
from milk meals, past age
i’m milkstain & woman
thanks to the gushblood
i live in castle turrets made
of candle wax
they say she witches, she claws,
she cauls, she clowns
ring the doorbell ;;;
you’ll drown
this old house as an afterlife for something
with its single cathedral window we build
our chapel of cardboard. the dirt floor murder-
traces the length of me & there next to me
last year’s easter palms retching with dust.
remember the animal on the roadside,
so rotted; a new species of beast. we gathered
for its funeral, three of us, & we grave-marked
with remains of china spewing the lawn.
ticks & cabbage roses both corkscrew
from flatware & carcass in search
of living hosts, tongues ready-wet
with the memory of blood. our flower
crowns ached unto us with false
prophecies, made my head spin
to glass, gouged & wounded. death delivers me
callouses & hangnails, blooming dewclaws
all down my achilles. much later,
we knew it was a possum that we buried,
perhaps the queen of them & we wondered
how the earth must starve itself gagwards
when fed the arms and legs of its own milk.
mother
under your cheek it’s all blood & i see it. by the lake so dry, you cart me
through the forest in nursery rhyme. tonight i am either
precious zirconia or go far from here else find my heart
pieces, boxed. childhood friend
of mine, i take you to the abandoned campers full of golden
junk we love with every carotid artery in our one-day
bodies. you’re-not-my-real-mom beats me upside the matted
curls with a tooth-comb. for the umpteenth time, fear
not – mayday is soon & the dancers surely will spike
my cranium with ribbon. anxiety is all mine through
hereditary trauma. now my very heartbeat is the name bloody
mary & my very corneal tear is a mirror with glass shatter
to the hundredth decimal point. the wrong time portal has me
sutured to its under-belly & this is not the natal chart
i came with. tuck me into the beautiful gross of my own
leg bruised against the bath ledge, purpling bed of lilies
spirographed. once i’ll live in a future corpse, rotted to a pile
of improperly laundered delicates. that’s right; i’m made
of lace & that night on the cart you storied me about ghosts so hard
they black-magicked my retinal cavities. bow down bones
of you; i am an afterlife for at least one small thing. unmothering
as an attempt at good works is what you should call it
when you speculum your mouth & all kinds
of new genus roses fall out.
walpurgisnacht
this state of wet pennies mossbeds my footpads i wishing well myself
through it ward off you behold dead relics
i lit my candles in the evening already it is time to hail
grandmothers’s green lady the painting of self
in mossshade & framed she says i was not thinking of ending my life
just leaving the kitchen just sleeping alone
in the moss staining my skin the same shade of green as this paint
& everyone balked & everyone swarmed & everyone sang
secretly as i did nothing is secret i like to sleep
woodtucked, too in need of bloodwork but it autocorrects
to bloodworm & so it shall be & so it is
my veins oozing with pest i lament not becoming
the witch sooner i’m collected on the germanic hill
a rag doll heap a real pile of doze
we chant until our mouths seep & our mouths drool
& our mouths fill with silk fans from some parlor
of our pastlife just so our mouths become dusty articulate
pastilles out come the moths out come the rats
out come the oil lamps hung swinging from our teeth
they’ve hollowed us out made waxdolls grandma’s
still sleeping by mirror lake clutching rosary can you imagine
a lake of mirrors i’ve always hoped the bathroom vanity
would pry for me wet with its tongues & in i’d drop
& there, there i’d be
-
Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton, These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese, and Lizzie, Speak. Senior editor at Luna Luna Magazine and a co-curator for Philly's A Witch's Craft reading series, she has work featured or forthcoming in Electric Literature, Fairy Tale Review, Bone Bouquet Journal, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere.
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