by Crista Siglin

artwork by Crista Siglin

I
it is not / absence calling / you to stone / the eyes of flowers / impeccable
cheekbones of riverbeds / vestige of a lesson / scores of images
interrupted condemnations / consider / when you eat
rotten strawberries / a fresh bowl of milk
does not follow

II
sphere of soap / water paroxysm / bent air, bent / waking dream / a garden
confuses / you alone / your stick and looped rope / limp and swaying
ennui / a mouse grows / long teeth / plays / dead, teeth exposed
the mouse remains / still / death waits for the mouse
who plays dead / an aroused string
distracts the cat

III
your hair does not become you, you become / your hair is damp / cold and smelling
shampoo / memory / misbegotten / plays with the ends of it / you
become an end / the ends play with you / erratic glass
underfoot / small vertabrae sound- as one
might imagine / constrained grief / sharp
dampened / a hungry animal waits
its nose / deepens your palm

IV
idle revelator / grief is here / just sits / no veil lifted / a girl speaks to sheep / she drinks
she, then frozen / just sheep / and she / some language to mimic them
where she treads / untranslated / no grace / she is terror
disgusted / she thaws / and dances

V
nosferatus turn tears to diamonds / we swim / our bodies thin, sharp
like the TV tower / God speaks / in 3rd person
so as not to startle anyone / I worry
for unsent postcards / to keep
the sky from falling

VI
a chair’s design is important for the mood / it strikes when it is empty / one could be tempted
to say waiting rather than empty / a chair waits for no one / it sits
on its own / considers its mood

VII
I’ve been known / loss of breath / beneath a strange bed / my mouth shuts / no air
nothing / blameless as a glass of water / no need to apologize
a glass of water says sorry before the door / ajar
water sees you / everything
everything / in itself

VIII
infected moon / glowing, pained / trees gather / round its pate / becoming
a hole / that old woman / kneels before it / I watch / behind
an illness / pouring into her

IX
the sky made itself / obscene / ‘50s diner, trampled confetti / the Sistene Chapel
half its image / missing / only Adam hovering / broken pair / scissors / a split
becoming a knife / smiles kept for the dog / smiles
scared of meaning something

X
step over a personality / dormant / instrument of sight, woman / a dove between her legs
she smiles before things happen / after desire, there is nothing / television houses
stolen dreams / soldiers fall into sleeping / sitting, standing, no matter
taking old women into temples / when they are no longer
visible / they take turns kissing / wasted gods

Crista Siglin grew up in Greenfield, Iowa, and moved to KCMO to complete a BFA in Painting and Creative Writing from the Kansas City Art Institute (’15). She now resides in Berlin, Germany. Her work explores the body and mind’s relationship to time, place, trauma, and phantasmagoria.