Red Room Where the Writers Are

This is a really cool piece I did in college--it's a "third party" experiment. Basically I took a "second party" experiment and took it a step farther...what's the experiment about, Steve?!? FFS...

Essentially, someone wrote a poem in first person...another person reads it and writes a response in second person based on the interpretation of the data in the first piece. Well, I went in and read BOTH pieces--and wrote a response to the response as well as the original; in third person obviously...and from the perspective of the young woman who wrote the piece that the other two pieces were based on...

Talking about breaking the "fourth wall", huh?

Say no to drugs, folks.

Her Lurid Affair

after seven hundred and twenty eight days, trickling,
she is faded; crumbled rust puddle at her frenulum.
So immobile, huddled in the dank stained corner,
opulently clothed with grime, grinding sour enamel
in her mouth down debris, unmoving, eyes tightly
rapt, almost squishing obsequious socket fluid forth-

"if I keep my eyes closed, I won't have to see," she says...

the only shift seems like a shiver, sweat covered
like a blanket she cannot kick off, so hot, so shot...
rotisserie round and round, her hands and legs bound
in all the white charring her skin, leaving her crisp;
and still she laments the filth, all those hands defiling,
spectral touches she vespers away, contaminated

"I won't move, they can't touch me if I stay still," she stays...

faceless bastards, they desire to rouse her, unclean
penetration by way of all her pores, no matter the size,
tinged with the venom in her veins, the disgusting fluids
continue to squirm all about her, they have squirmed
seven hundred and twenty eight long powdery ones on her
opaque layers; damaged, lacerated veins will not stop them

"the cuts aren't deep enough, I will cut deeper still," she splays...

focusing past her hands, up her arms, the burning sensations,
grit on her tender cellophane, ripping into her. The bumps,
all the bumps she's taken, melt all the good things inside,
while she cuts the lines deeper. She makes more lines in the white
underage of her extremity, trails so razor sharp, just letting
some air in to do the trick: detoxification as a form of peace

"the more lines, the easier things will be for me in the end," she sways...

she still cannot begin to see. Eyes closed, all those long lines
under her eyes, all seven hundred and twenty eight days worth,
each crag deeper than the next, cracks her face, smiting her-
like all the cigarettes put out on her, the needles put into her,
the semen staining the insides of her, all the tranquil defiling;
hoping the next three hundred and sixty four days differ somehow...

"all this silence tastes like sleeping, I can now sleep as long as I want," she strays...

knowing the other seven hundred and twenty eight days are lost;
knowing all the white clothes will not come clean no matter;
knowing all the lines she carved will not wash off in the shower;
and how the haunting hands from the last seven hundred and twenty eight
will creep all over her in the dark for the three hundred and sixty four days
she lies immersed, tussled and dragging, her shell cold; a daguerreotype.

She exhales, "Í refuse movement, I sleep myself oblivious; nothing will grope at me again."

© 2008 Steve Ekstrom