The world turns
as it's supposed to,
squared away, everything
in its proper place.
Machines eat themselves sick,
flaking and gorging in a slurry,
lithium-grease and pyrophoric metal,
oxides and benzenes and cypionates.
A girl sits in a waiting room, glasses
fogging on her nose;
sodium hypochlorite sterility
singeing the eyes with its purity.
Another is born, meat for the slaughter
hemoglobin-scent and whetstone powder,
cold sweat and hot tears, saline
by any other name,
"Oh, Glory!" they cry, knives sharp.
"Let us exalt her!" they chant, hands ready.
"She will be beautiful!" they sing, with nothing but
welcoming behind their eyes.
She sleeps under her coat, curled
precariously on worn furniture-canvas,
fitful, despite her lover's sheets still
bearing her fragrance.
A cog is fitted into place.
Burnished steel, factory lubricant pungent
in the still air, hot and humid and heavy
like a lover's kiss or hungry maw.
Incorporeality is a forbidden luxury to her,
as she will always be her body and her
body will be her, chest and soul heaving
all at once; nourishment begot desire.
She is only self-made in the way any
piece of art may be, brushstrokes painted
by hands foreign, the artist the conduit
of the zeitgeist, true agency questionable.
When the sun rises, she is Saturn herself,
perfumed in stinking iron and
saline and ethanol vapor,
lips whet with the blood of a new sacrifice,
streaked down her chin in reverence,
her beauty only at expense, cost
just palatable enough to bear,
just enough to not be sickened at the sight,
bile rising in the throat and lungs constricted,
eyes averted so as not to see
her own reflection in those
silky brown irises.
Because she was strong,
she could take it.
Why couldn't they?
The world turns
as it's supposed to,
squared away, everything
back in its proper place.