DAY SIX! Six Self Portraits / February 9, 2017 by Rebecca Ann Jordan

return to divine

and at three it’s twilight
three in the morning that twilight
(fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine—
a nine and a gray and that sleep-panic
the gray of the unconscious cloak ripped off and
--three o’clock)
what if

indeed the pull at your sweaty sheets
unwrinkles the tiny hills
of a land for insects, can you imagine—
no, you project yourself outward to encompass
that massive body you can’t fathom
that might be unwrinkling your own hills
year after year the eroding of them

look down, breathe
one, two—
a stain
you’re leaking your rain at someone’s twilight
on the only world you can
/can’t see
--three

Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author, artist, and editor. Her stories and poems have been published inStrange Horizons, Flapperhouse, Fiction Vortex, Strangelet, and more. In 2015 Becca participated in the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2016. While Becca first sprung from the earth near the San Diego area, she now sells weird and wonderful books in the mountain town of Durango, Colorado. See more at rebeccaannjordan.com or follow her @beccaquibbles.

DAY FIVE: Six Self Portraits / February 8, 2017 by Rebecca Ann Jordan

after the apocalypse

we’ll catch the ice between our toes
and slip

lip to lip, try to hold me
try to make my body contain
what it’s always contained
before

through midwinter hunches
that old hack and cackle
howling at the moon by habit now
it’s in darker weather the witch
comes to inhabit, starting at the marrow

but what you’re looking for
is thaw and whittle
down to the barest essentials of human
the bare(d) skin/teeth trained to smile

i am devouring for the extra inch of fat to burn
the hunker and draw
telling fortune: now let me say
what it is i dream
when snow muffles the escape

DAY FOUR: Six Self Portraits / February 7, 2017 by Rebecca Ann Jordan

Beautiful Brain

Every nerve moves
to the surface and raw.
Will you touch, will you burn,
will she bite. You’re thinking
in the light less illuminating
than the contents of the brain
shifting in the night. She’s a sinuous
gray animal just beneath
your surface. Her tongue
is lewdly in the ice and fishing
for your freeze and thaw. Have another leaf and turn. Face
behind the sternum and
what brilliant howl is waiting
to be peeled from the waiting—and maybe
none, when we look twice riveting
than we are in the slow think of meat. Inside sleeps
the centennial wonder: when.
Tomorrow
the cut flowers will whisper their scent
but will you listen
with your mouth stuffed
to the brim with your own lose hair and wonder
how small the body’s become, or will you do
something
or return
to painting feeble expression

Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author, artist, and editor. Her stories and poems have been published in Strange Horizons, Flapperhouse, Fiction Vortex, Strangelet, and more. In 2015 Becca participated in the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2016. While Becca first sprung from the earth near the San Diego area, she now sells weird and wonderful books in the mountain town of Durango, Colorado. See more at rebeccaannjordan.com or follow her @beccaquibbles.

DAY THREE: Six Self Portraits / February 6, 2017 by Rebecca Ann Jordan

move me

i’m asking now what
isn’t there
what is
pushing in the direction of
direction in
folding out the careful
tear the gingerly left
leaf the outside in
the crackle a burning
the spackling a building up
where isn’t it
tall the inside out
the window is it
i’m asking now what
is heavy, where isn’t
frail how is

DAY TWO: Six Self Portraits / January 31, 2017 by Rebecca Ann Jordan

Locked

at half past five full dark
and all the doors shut
shutter
down the hall the dogs barking
above dancing on their floor, my skull
shrinking night by night
somehow the rooms are getting smaller
or am I getting larger
down to the laundry the knob won’t turn
and the bathroom door is empty, locked
turn around and where’d you go
is that your coat disappearing around the corner
are those your shoes on the floor
wait, you left your—
I am waiting for the cupboard to open
some handle’s pressed against it shut
I am waiting for you to come home
and open all the doors

Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author, artist, and editor. Her stories and poems have been published in Strange Horizons, Flapperhouse, Fiction Vortex, Strangelet, and more. In 2015 Becca participated in the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2016. While Becca first sprung from the earth near the San Diego area, she now sells weird and wonderful books in the mountain town of Durango, Colorado. See more atrebeccaannjordan.com or follow her @beccaquibbles.

DAY ONE: Six Self Portraits / January 30, 2017 by Rebecca Ann Jordan

Drawing In and Deprivation

Lace and traces of foil the size of your fist; Caesar’s spices and those made hand-ground underground: On these nights I find myself the victim of my own fruitless pleasures and taste buds lie dormant, whispering: ever over the bridge of metal and test our mettle before biting. The bite is the thing that made dents in tin indented inside our locked tent. There the shadows of us are without, within the hearts they change their parts littering out their glitter like pasteless poison. How the rich practitioners of history, makers of their stories, tell down the centuries and flatten to paper a small hand that canned their meals. Mark the hours gone at the twisting time and twine your hand with mine at the worst of it; no curse can trace its spaces on our skin so long’s the dawn’s drawing in is caught in our saffron curtain and us behind it. How many tastes there are still to revel in! And certainly how many beveled edges we have to brush the dust away on and cut our teeth. See the gleaming of it. Glean all I’m saying. Swaying outside in the hard bark of the branches and left our leaves for later are the ears taking all this in and categorizing our sins, remembered for the chopping and making of our door. Along the floor the shadows beneath it grow long and don’t worry, the woodgrain will remember, but isn’t it December yet and long past time we built ourselves some damp close camp against the guilt and the forever.

Rebecca Ann Jordan is a speculative fiction author, artist, and editor. Her stories and poems have been published in Strange Horizons, Flapperhouse, Fiction Vortex, Strangelet, and more. In 2015 Becca participated in the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2016. While Becca first sprung from the earth near the San Diego area, she now sells weird and wonderful books in the mountain town of Durango, Colorado. See more at rebeccaannjordan.com or follow her @beccaquibbles.