Small Woolen Creature And I am kneaded up thinly, scrap-tumbling into my corner. Coughing up shivering shapes, I'm stuck staring at huddled flem, admiring it back. Screech tired, barely braced. my arm slopes against dad's nice concrete wall. My hand warmly bleeding out disembodied bits into the corner’s other worldly porous caves. i sit, on floorboards contorted by the heavenly image of what always felt like someone else's butt, through someone else's body. i sit, and swallow myself, on you and in you; my thoughts are thin, And on you I still hear yelling. And I am a small woolen creature. There are goblins in the hypnagogia I'm boxing off. Across my eyes go down onto the dark jumble of clothes on the chair. And in the slow drum of new wilting the jumble moves, in specificity, in a speckled twist of sweet leaves browning and moon moths burning. Forcefully the art of it drips into me through sweatily melted plastic IV pillows. So i jump into the made, upward grasp, my artificial caress, to the cut off somethings that can look back knowingly. And I am a small woolen creature stuck in the grim-joyous crispness of the corner. Where floating eggs have harpies tattooed on their faces who know all rats are born flawed and pin up their taxidermy afterwards as proof. And characters whose names I can't remember loudly slurp up fresh silk from the big silk bucket marked with red pin, "silk". There are puppets without wonky felt eyes born with vestigial puppeteers, who sit all day and birth paper stuffing fluffs that seem like thin clouds. Father figures, alone in my room, laugh and call 911, and operators sigh, and he says they knew it was him. The Burning Moon moths don't quite sing as they hover in and around the neatly placed rows of glazed over eyes. There is dancing in the mold growths where strung out, still; the cheapest pet store crickets play string music. And there is dancing in the mold growths. There is long-happiness here i'm sure, even i have to float sometimes, i'm told And I am a small woolen creature.
Found A Fitting World
My arm has broken out in a rash. I don’t think it’s a normal rash, or not like one i’ve had before. I feel a mangle of caterpillars beneath the red mark, squirming and sulking like they’re hunting for something stuck beneath my chest.
Fleshy beats with samples of gasping blood vessels, all laced with hints of caterpillars hurtling, churning over each other in fingerpaint-like crescent streaks. At odd arhythmic times their movement stops and in their absence i almost hear whispers secreting up through the pores in my skin. So many small movements now take the place of running thoughts. Writhing, blissful caterpillars wash over the space where once was a consuming blue that made my vision bleed.
Caterpillars with stray hypodermic hairs flourishing in growing numbers taking turns to reach up and rub against the underside of my skin, their touches almost drift into a melody, but just before I could place that song one will disrupt it with another flick of their hairs. I pretend not to imagine what it’d feel like just to carve into my arm to greet them.
Beneath my skin are waves of hundreds of caterpillars interweaving like quilts or aerosol paint strokes on tagged and crumbling walls. Foaming out from any orifice near, swells of caterpillars building and expanding in circular chuckles and breaths, like the anxious movement of lungs. Cutting through the numbness, my rib cage melts into a pool of runny clay clotted with even more caterpillars, and opens in the shape of something cusping, softly fluttering, and moving upward in still purple swells.
And then I’m smiling with my face upside down buried in runny clay hands. Caterpillars singing through the mud and what’s left of fingerbones, I swallow them as they enter my mouth. in me, and in the absence of any gusts of wind, the little blue ghostlings fold in deeply upon themselves. It’s like I am young, raised by caterpillars, alone in the woods, not quite dreaming, simply squirming through dirt.
About the author
Ophelia Jones, 21, is a writer and poet. They used to be a closeted writer, while in a number of other queer closets. Now out, enjoying the wonder and beauty they find while they walk around Lynn, Ma. (When their meds are pulling their weight, of course.) As a warning they do have blue butterflies stuck in their bathtub drain, so if anyone knows a good plumber, reach out. The image provided is of a complete stranger so, If you’re wondering what they look like, vaguely like the small gnome you find in the center of a peanut M&M. Still growing and learning as a writer, if you know any other publications let Ophelia know by finding them under that bridge closest to your house. They write and edit for the otherworldly renowned newspaper @ https://surrealtimes.net/
DIY MFA 