FLIES
We begin painting everything itself. Lost insects swirl in hurried circles as the storm starts. Your hand covers a portion of your mouth. In the dump and in the cosmos. A fizzing puddle of seltzer moves toward the ant trap. A cloud streams through dirt detergent haunted jewels as Marguerite Duras watches a fly die. Television on the floor flutters color bars.
MILK PAINT
Shaking stranger’s reflection in revolving coffee. Milk and gem. I sit beside my brother and begin to paint on a five by five-foot canvas. Stinger in the cream. The café scene loops. I make the glittermilk spin, paint. More than ever I have to look around me. More than ever I have to look around me more. Than ever I have to look.
BEFORE VISITATION
that light swells
tongue, spleen
black cherry seltzer
hisses prodigiously
confectionary nausea
crushing frosted flakes
on the kitchen floor
calico cat on purple blanket
and record player
prostrate angel calendar
away from Plato’s sun, a gold locket
dangles high above the dishwater
in the French film
Hermès handbag on fire
uprooted cord of the varnished world
faux fur coat with gold clasps
some people will walk through
that door any minute now
apple skin on the counter curls
into paused soda water
BETWEEN
Pythagoras heard the voice of his dead friend
from the mouth of an injured dog
his mystic cult of math was popular
a heart drawn around the words
a human heart in a candy box
whose hue extracts then spits back
interregnum between steel and cloud
a heart is a recording device running loops
around grandmother’s old house
—
Emmalea Russo is a writer and artist living at the Jersey shore. Her books are G (Futurepoem, 2018) and Wave Archive (Book*hug, 2019). Recent writing has appeared in Artforum, American Chordata, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Granta, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. A new chapbook, Great Mineral Silence (2020) is out from Sputnik & Fizzle. She’s pursuing a PhD in Philosophy and edits Asphalte Magazine.