october 2016
impose Their language - essa ranapiri
You borrow from faggots
and queers alike
a thief riddled with
Foucault’s chains-
are not chains are
linked at the opposable thumb
scraping back the paint on your corneas
Imprint
the context
on your friends and family
with signifier of cloth
projector screen
warps at the edges where it isn’t straight
Otherwise known as bullshit
non-binary is complete
and utter-
It doesn’t fit with zeroes and ones hun
paint the nails and trim them back
to raw
Your name is like the dusk
a photosynthetic blip
of masking tape
your beliefs
have nothing to do with it
wrench in the gasket
the piston is in and out and
Right in his fucking arsehole
lies the law
a sun the size of a jungle
feels like a fist
jolting the skull
loosening the grey matter
should tear off your hair to make everything match
the tool is pressed to your tail bone
you know what to do
with the rest of the problem
you c
all a genderless body
in the no man’s field
ripen beyond seeds
ferment beyond willows
And swallow what you spit up.
Circadian Rhythm - essa ranapiri
There are so many nows and they keep
happening
I would love you on one knee.
Turn each one of your quips into a dose,
and consume.
the mouth open wide
and the hand down the pants tracing paper
on the thighs.
Playing script down my throat.
Something like love me tender
or choke on this
in your eyes.
Slide to the side, the words will never look finished.
Shared the couch at Wonderhorse
you were to my left
my whole body was swivelled to face you
I talked about a fucking t-shirt for a good minute or so just to keep the focus on:
Dope-stunk-
sick-range-
Aubergine your favourite
A solipsistic dog insisting that the swimmer got it all wrong
by placing a world within your eggplant basket;
The fish fell in love with you.
So I tattooed it onto my wrist
see here ichthys;
it weeps fertile, a circle with a point
Opening---------------------------------------m----------------------------------------e--------------------------
ichor thistle
You said the navel
You said
The knee is plastered to the ground and I can’t suck your poison out fast enough
make a cup with my hands
draw discordant
like a satchel in a tight breeze
Not sure what you’re getting at or how
but I want all of you down here and in all of me
like snapper or hoki or-
Sentiment and bullshit on the lino;
Where bodies fuck/ and come
apart/ like dry leaves.
not delivered due to lack of postage - essa ranapiri
I want
your dog of marriage
hempel collected
sketchbook bound
to
take up the plastic
and teeth graze the
marks of fibrous hooks
into the epitaxy
valium.
The sticker wasn’t indication enough;
Turn it.
One out of two sides is not hidden.
One out of two sides is a car door slam.
Nonsense;
there was a tradition of that
once
Bottom lip twitch
clear-throat cough,
isolated spittle
mottled oropharynx
vibration.
Cricket call at 300 bpm
muted.
Trying to recoil the strength to do something about it.
Poltergeist of the inner ear
denies notification
to avoid empty serotonin rush
we would have called it a river if we could see it
but we can’t.
Contributor's Note
essa ranapiri is a gender-queer poet who writes a lot, some of it is good. They study English at the University of Waikato.