ANT PHARMACY

The crowd salutes in the shape of a diamond. 

"The Mother, the Father, and the Wailing Womb" 

And the shrieking sounds of grief eternal can never be forgotten. I know this and I know you've tried to. You needn't confess That, my beloved. My child. I smell it in your salt. 

The sick are being healed at random. The miracle works cast lots and shrug at the results. Lives are dispensed back in a shotgun shell pattern while others return home on leprous limbs. 

With great care I make sure everything I put into my body makes me less biodegradable and will poison the earth a little more when terrestrial lips of mud and maggot work the meat from my bones. I want to take a species with me. 

I'm not happy being your afterthought but I'm not unhappy being thought of. 

I'm not happy being afterbirth. I am envious of the newborn you cradle. But I'm not unhappy being so nutritious. 

Roots beneath growing deep, I suck out what I can from the soil. 

I am stalk and I am vascular leaves and I am iridescent petals. 

I grow to face away from the sun 

And it doesn't notice. 

Mine eyes see the links between it all and how everything happens for a reason Mine eyes see the networked meaning between us and the absence to which we must return I meditate beneath the same tree upon which I am nailed 

To want is to suffer and to suffer is good. 

I am permitted to be the serpent that feasts 

The destroyer of worlds and unmaker of beasts 

And through swallowing mouth I beg to create 

While All-That-Was, inside me, meets final fate 

The steed beneath crawls with what is left of it, and the sands sting. Squinting and starving. Chafed and chafing ever more, less tissue by the sidewinding second. He stays mounted. The creature obeys. Lest it be him. Lest he take its place. 

I pray to be God 

Surge-a-dirge from adolescent whimsy / A whirlwind workshopped and whittled The devil is in the details / The devil is in the towering dust 

Weeping and gnawing down feathers 

Be so good to you Be so good to you all

My Brood My Burden My Body My Blood 

Voyeur on the scale of nations and species 

My Wine My Wafer My Wife My Waste 

Beware me and mine Beseech Me and My Works 

My Cross My Cradle My Crown My Crust 

I watch you fail but I'm rooting for you, my son 

My Manger My Mother My Martyr My Mud 

Climactic extinction and an exodus every minute 

I need not manifest 

Unless one or many make of me that request 

And do with me as they will 

Praise or punish the road to my heart is the same 

My cup will run over 

And my elect will find calm waters 

While the rest find deluge 

The Sacred Heart is cradled by scabs 

More and more by the prayer 

My chest is tight, the beating grows turgid 

Flakes of infinite outpouring love healed over 

and they cascade into the cage of my ivory 

into my carriage 

around my trunk 

I am not enfeebled by these constraints 

The boundaries release me 

I am liberated by 

The Beliefs 

That I choose to adhere to 

Without a choice 

I can't remember if his fat neck wore a collar. I couldn't tell even in that moment, I just saw his wrinkles and that sweat that was squeezed between them. I saw his bodily pain and the years he carried. All colored in with humming kitschy dive bar neon. He cleared his throat a lot. He told me about the little voice in my head that mocked me for passivity and for putting myself out there. For caring and for growing calloused. He told me to take that voice and fuck it in the mouth. 

I take his place. I am the lamb and the ram and every soul below will hold a knife to me and for me. I am so proud of you. I’ve known you always. You can tell me anything.

You nail yourself to the cross I already bear. Thinking we would have traded them if we could.

I will die for you. You might even need it.

by Vivian Cartagena

Vivian Cartagena can be found @weirdal_andalus