1567 c/o Brandi Wells

NIGHTSHIRT

His nightshirt twists, pulls tight. It slows him, this goddamn nightshirt. It holds bunches of his flesh back. It traps globs of fat and then his whole body in a slow dreamlike run where he isn’t moving half as fast as he imagines he could.
                    He stumbles.
                    Stumbles again.
                    If only there wasn’t this goddamn nightshirt.
                    He stands up.
                    Stumbles.
                    And then the knife. So much more vicious, more personal than the explosion would have been. The choice is never between fire and ice, but simply run, run, run. Fall and get up. Run.
                    And afterwards, or rather during, the knife.
                    Then stillness. The nightshirt and him, so calm. The way the nightshirt is draped across him suggests a kind of championing on the nightshirt’s part, a kind of honor.

1566 c/o Jason Lee Norman

Nostradamus Dies of Gout. Nostradamus Dies
of a Broken Heart. Nostradamus Crosses a
Bridge that is Yet to be Built.

Nostradamus died of gout on a Friday evening. He would be the first person in history to die of complications relating to gout. Spiked rods of crystallized uric acid pushed their way through his synovial fluid just as he composed a quatrain about the end of the world “first the skies will fill with volcanic ash, then the oceans will catch fire”. The last thing Nostradamus wanted was to die of gout. The second last thing he wanted was to compose a quatrain about the end of the world. Nostradamus, as few people knew, was really an optimist. Before Nostradamus died of gout he lay his enlarged and inflamed foot on a foot rest. The slightest breeze set him into agony. His wife Henrietta and his oldest daughter were downstairs in the den. Henrietta was drinking camomile and his daughter was drinking warm milk, to help her sleep. Upstairs, Nostradamus - covered in sweat - failed to stifle a sneeze and the vibration coursing through his biggest toe brought him to tears. Nostradamus squealed for Henrietta to come upstairs and chop off his foot. Henrietta grabbed the sharpest knife from the kitchen and came into the study where Nostradamus was composing a quatrain about the end of the world.
            “I was composing a quatrain about the end of the world,” Nostradamus whined.
            “How sad,” cooed Henrietta, “Will there be volcanic ash?”
            “Yes. And oceans of fire”
            Henrietta knelt in front of Nostradamus.
            "I will cut off your foot my darling. I will take away all the pain."
            Nostradamus shook his head, “I will not be alive come morning”

Nostradamus died of a broken heart on a Tuesday morning.

Before Nostradamus died of a broken heart he was lying on his bed listening to Leonard Cohen. Nostradamus was in love with a girl who did not love him back. Nostradamus was in love with a waitress at a restaurant that served breakfast all day long. The last thing he wanted was to die from a broken heart because, as most people know, Nostradamus was an optimist. Everything Nostradamus tried in order to woo the waitress had failed. All of his love poems turned into quatrains about the end of the world.
            "All iPhones will become defective. The brown pelicans will drown in oil" Nostradamus became the 4000th person to die of a broken heart.

Nostradamus was first and foremost an apothecary. His cures were known throughout many kingdoms. But there was a recession on and Nostradamus had to take odd jobs to make ends meet. When he was commissioned to build a new bridge for a city that was split in half by a river, Nostradamus was told two things: the bridge must be built using local materials and if not completed in a year the punishment would be death.
            By day Nostradamus made sure the scaffoldings were straight and the materials were local. By night he planned his funeral, occasionally stopping to compose a quatrain about the end of the world.
            "All bridges will collapse. Gift cards will become useless"
            Nostradamus knew nothing of building bridges. The only thing he knew is that the world had ended before and would someday end again - vaguely resembling his cryptic visions.
            Nostradamus died on a Sunday. He became the third person in history to die of a missed deadline.

1565 c/o J. Bradley

Long Lad

You wouldn't believe the smile I've rented to watch you walk down the dusty artery of that aisle. My hand starves, the acid of anticipation lapping at my palm; it awaits to gorge itself on your fingertips. I would paint the moon the shade of your eyes so you are always looking at me, so I may bow like a wick waiting for the matchhead of your lips.

1564 c/o Stephen O'Toole

Voices of the Kissing Ban

The ban, it was good for us. My friend and I. We hadn't worked in months, and suddenly there were things that needed doing. Enforcement. Demolition. I was enforcement first. The long arm of a law.

The arm, anyway.

My friend, he is saying something about the size of my penis.

*

At the start, we had defined 'public' as 'anywhere that wasn't under a roof', but this had its problems. Hitherto innocent outdoor toilets were hollowed out, their tops taken off, becoming the infamous 'kissing cylinders'. You remember. The sounds were unbearable. We needed new ways of knowing what was happening inside. I had my ear against one in particular when I hit upon the now familiar definition. 'Any place where air can pass through'. I'm still proud.

*

They employed us to wave fans at weaknesses of the wood.

I met my wife in a kissing cylinder.

Sometimes the walls weren't weak enough. We had knives to open them apart. Then they felt our breeze okay.

I'm sorry, I meant: I met your wife in a kissing cylinder.

*

Yes, that's right. I started the Chapped Lips League at the time when they were taking walls off houses. My mother caught pneumonia in a breeze. Her bedroom open on all sides. Why? She hadn't put her lips on anything in years. When I found her they were blue.

*

They were working for us, that lot, the CLL, and never realised it. Who wants a great red 'X' on the side of their house? Dead mothers indeed! We had mobs hammering at our doors. Begging us to take their walls from them. Entirely unnecessary, of course; we'd had no doors for months. The doors were in piles in the dust by the dogs. The dogs had made a sort of pissing against them.

*

Because no one ever had their revenge by putting things back to the way they were, is why. Yes, the early days were difficult: you try running a sloganeering campaign when there are no walls to draw on. But we found other ways. More permanent ways. It's much easier to learn something when everyone is looking at you, but thinking about themselves.

*

I like my scar.

I like your scar.

My scar is a great red 'X'.

*

The business with the blades was a problem, yes. We had to retaliate. But I am nothing if not a man of ideas. Here. Would you like to see my lips? I've kept them all, pressed in a book.

*

I cope. One's plosives, and eating spaghetti, are most difficult.

1563 c/o Lydia Unsworth

Red Is My Favourite Colour

It is 7:53am and she knows this because the sun is rising.

She is thirty-two metres above sea level and her face is plain.

The day stretches into the shape of a bucket and her spine is crooked because sometimes she is empty and sometimes she is full. She turns her fingers around its handles.

She is content, she thinks, because her ears don't pop and her hands don't shake and her digestive system is all in order. She smiles into the cool air and the cool air waves branches in return.

She walks into a heat that is sidelong and getting taller and she thinks about the empire. Three sheep approach and sniff the bucket's rim. She lets go of the bucket with one hand and tries to touch one of the sheep but it moves away.

She watches the back of the sheep and leaves the bucket on the ground until the other two sheep turn and follow.

She thinks about velocity and she counts three sheep and feels awake.

When the sheep are far enough away she picks up the bucket and sighs as her spine once again bends over.

She thinks about the empire because this is the largest thing she knows and she wonders when it was that everything started to sound the same. She thinks about the size of the empire and how it is constantly trying to improve itself. She wonders if everything has started to sound the same throughout the whole empire and if the empire is only expanding into more sameness. She wonders if it is really a victory if you are doing battle with yourself.

She holds onto the bucket and feels safe.

She looks at the contents of the bucket and sees there is still some space. She feels a pull on her spine but remembers the word challenge and feels OK. She thinks about her grandmother and how she dove head-first into her own funeral. She thinks about the future and about her spine and thinks it would be nice to have her head in the sand.

The empire is enormous and so she tries to think about just one corner. She holds onto the bucket and feels glad that she does not have the weight of an empire in her hands. She tries to think about what she would do with all that space. She imagines a line of buckets, two up two down, each containing a small portion. She looks down into her bucket and knows she will never go too far away.

A few inches remain to the bucket's rim and she feels that returning like this would be a little bit like being empty-handed. They would ask what she had been doing, why she had let the sheep run away. Her spine cracks softly and she and the bucket take a few small steps forward.

She sifts through the sand with her feet.

A long shadow peels over the steppe to the East. She follows its tail-end with her eyes until she reaches a luminous centre. On top of a horse with hooves full of shade, she sees a man with a whip and a voice and good posture. He is situated very close to the horizon and from where she is standing he is smaller than cave paintings, but she can feel in her heart that he is stronger than caves.

Her grandmother taught her about the symbols for these feelings, about how to read them. Before she died she carved the meanings into the sand with her nose.

The meanings are now covered in sheep dung and bad water. They use the sheep dung for fuel in the winter, thus burning the idea of romantic love.

She puts down her bucket. Stands in front of it. She tries to wave to the man but both the steppe and her face are plain. Her dress is the colour of dust and her eyes the colour of mountains. The bucket is red but lies shielded behind the two rounded muscles of her calves.

The man is looking for something as large as bison and so thinks nothing when dust moves. He watches the sand undulate and he thinks, 'This is my desert, this is my empire, I belong here and this desert is mine'. He does not think about love.

The girl waves until the temptation of more bison becomes too great. Standing as she was, she did not notice the heavy red sun strike a chord with the red of her bucket. Like two things perfectly aligned and passed through microscopic lenses they could have burnt the earth.

She follows the tail-end of more shadows but they all lead to night.

She picks up her bucket and returns to the hut (where she will wait for another one thousand years).

The sun sets at 4:20pm that day, after providing the steppe with eight hours and twenty seven minutes of sunlight.

1562 c/o Mel Bosworth

You Do Not Drive a Practical Car and I Am Okay
With That Because You Have Lips

1562

The year kissing in public in Naples was punishable by death.

The year we learned to kiss with our hands, making lips with our hands, little finger mouths, kissy kissy, funny funny, whoa! slipping in some finger tongue you naughty bitch, you can’t kill us for that, can you?

The year we lived in my grandfather’s attic, staring down at the street, the wet street—the street was wet when it rained, no shit, okay.

The year dogs barked for no good reason, please shut up.

The year we sewed our own clothes, yes yes yes yes yes.

Things.

It was the year of things and fake kissing with hand mouths or mouth hands—sexy whores.

Look at my lipstick!

I can’t stand living in Naples. I can’t stand at all. I have no legs.

Here’s a picture.



And here’s me whistling through the streets of Naples, the wet, no fuss no muss streets.

I will miss that year, that year of hiding and sweat. Hello.

1561 c/o Shiona Tregaskis & Crispin Best

Moat

1561: And out of the strong came forth sweetness. And out of the eater came forth meat. I think my eyes will burn a hole, I close my eyes, I hear some music, I think of Samson. I am a dead lion. I am some bees. I am a fool. I disappear until the building has been consecrated and elevated to the status of basilica. So the west has a column, dedicated to the Christ’s entry into Jerusalem.


1583: I am a fool with a sword of blue and white flames. I see the altar, I see the flames, I see my hands. The basilica has burned down. You've found me, I'm a fossil. What shall we do with me? So the north-west has a vault dedicated to Gregory the Illuminator, whose left hand is in Armenia and right is in Lebanon (his head being these days in Italy).


1589: A local fool, Basil the Blessed (apprentice cobbler, for whose coffin Ivan the Terrible acted as pallbearer), has been buried in the grounds. Fragments of the coffin drawn into the dead man's mouth. So the north-east has a vault dedicated to the archbishops of Alexandria and Cairo (Arbitrators of the Oecumene; Thirteenth Apostles; Primates of Pentapolis, Libya, Nubia and Sudan), but no, now it is for John the Merciful (who half-dug his own grave and then paid a servant to come regularly and remind him to finish the job). I am dead, how can I help you?


1600: I see what is stuck between my ribs. The Ivan the Great bell tower has been completed, meaning the basilica is no longer the tallest building in Moscow. What shall we do? So the east has a column for the Holy Trinity. Look. We can be incredibly quiet. I see myself 39 years ago when I smelled like wood and stone. I see what is stuck between my ribs.


1672: A sanctuary in memory of another local fool, Ivan the Blessed, has been established. So the south-east has a vault dedicated to Alexander Svirsky, who’s only died a few years ago. A few years is the gap between the red candles, the white candles, and so on. You are a large egg that has broken open. Flour heaps on the tiled floor, orange and blue. You are yeast. You are alive. Bread is alive what is bread and wine is in fact a face and a pulse. Drink for ever in a worthy manner.


1683: The gap widens and the basilica has been adorned with a tiled cornice, in yellow and blue colours, featuring a written history of the basilica. Fingers at the neck now fall. Eyes vault up. Eyes circle left, outwards, narrow to letters. Eyes scan the gold, more than gold, full up with flowers, pluck out, pick out the flowers and trace the lettering, lie under one-by-one curve under history. So the south has a column for Saint Nick. The gap widens. Look. You can be incredibly quiet. You are in my mouth. Beneath us organs thrill.


1784: But the inscriptions of 1683 have been removed. So the north-eastern annex of course has a vault for Basil the Blessed (no longer wandering naked but for chains) who wrote indescribable filth in his diary, bore disappointments well. I see bets being made. You in flannel in a cot, depending on the folds. You are a substance. Here are your teeth, yet again. This is that thing and that is this other.


1812: I see cartridges empty. French troops are using the basilica as stables, looting the rooms. The Fire of Moscow does not damage the building. So the central core has a tented church, dedicated to the intercession of Theotokos (god bearer, who is also Mary, who is also a virgin, who is also our lady of wherever we last saw her). Her chest is a church. My chest is a tented church. My attention holds the flame, narrows sky margins, dusts inner nostrils, dust. For instance: here is a table.


1923: The basilica has become a museum. The Virgin has a cock and balls. She is a dead lion, she is a swarm of bees. She is the water, the wind scoops hollows from the water, she is the colour of various leaves, mud. So the south-eastern annex has a vault at first for Laying of the Veil, then the Nativity of Theotokos, then lastly Saint John the Blessed of Moscow. Birds are tunnelling beneath you this very moment. You are in fountains with no water. Incense remains.


1929: Religious services have been discontinued. Tongues wag on. So the north has another column, originally for Cyprian and Justinia (who were unaffected by torture and so beheaded) but now dedicated to Adrian and Natalia (whose deaths caused a thunderstorm, becoming patron saints of epilepsy and butchers, that sort of thing). An onion dome is above you. Words that fly out of Natalia and land in Adrian, words that are light, words that can never go back to the way things were before, words that sometimes leave something valuable in their wake and sometimes nothing. An onion dome is below you. Now.


1939: The cathedral has been locked up. Look. I can be incredibly quiet while your chest echoes. Now. I will prove this cushion, I will recite these pews. So the south-west has a vault dedicated to a hermit. Once a building has been consecrated it can never be used for secular purposes. I will convince you of this low platform, and so on.