And on the edge of a parapet
and on a roof and another.
It’s not the lightning;
it’s the thunder that activates.
Iron resonates.
In a summer storm
one by one
they start to sway.
Big bolts become joints
stagnancy diffused
Thirty one silhouettes across
bluing sky move.
Climb
down
An army of artwork
replicating the inventor.
A clanging systematic
meandering through
the grid. The rain ends.
They keep going
automatic.
On concrete sidewalks in rows of three
unprogrammed and seemingly sentient.
In humid heat over grates of steam and
subway screams, they march in glinting sun
unswayed, a marathon of mechanics.
Autumn comes. People stop running.
They take pictures in winter.
Then in spring,
the robotic march
remains simply another
city thing, cogs and
wheels and disused fury.
AND AFTER THE THREE GODS CREATED humans from two paired trees;
after they broke down the body of Ymir:
his skull the sky, his brains the clouds,
bones unbroken into mountains,
his blood all oceans, flesh flensed clean
into all the mortal world,
the maggots came
feasting on unused parts:
the brow, the spleen, the lining of arteries.
Such is the nature of maggots,
to clean up the messes of giants.
The gods wished to continue creating
to fill up the chaotic void unperturbed.
And so, the gods cast their random plan—
Immoral maggots banished
as a race of chthonic trolls—
may a hint of daylight render them to stone.
The maggots deemed moral found
a place to flit about somewhere between
Earth and Heaven, lovely fairies of light.
{ X }
“Legacy of Strega”
HIS FATHER DIED IN CORSICA. Natural causes. When a man gets stabbed, naturally he bleeds. When a man gets stabbed more than once, naturally he bleeds more. When all the blood bleeds out, naturally he dies.
His mother died in Corsica. On a full stomach. She sucked up all the husband’s blood, her lips on each stab wound. Then she found some daggers and plunged them into herself.
Into the tomb they went, his dead mother and him in her womb. Self-sufficient in a dead space in a dead space. Self-delivered from a dead space into a dead space. Then he climbed out. It was night.
From dark place in a dark place to wide open dark place. To dabble with goblins. To make a new race. To suck. To scour. To ghoul and gyre. To hunt nocturnal. On moors. Crags of rock. Pale to the moonlight.
{ X }
photo by Kaeti Wigeland
CHRISTINA M. RAU is the author of the poetry chapbooks WakeBreatheMove(Finishing Line Press, 2015) and For The Girls, I (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). Founder of Poets In Nassau, a reading circuit on Long Island, NY, her poetry has appeared on gallery walls in The Ekphrastic Poster Show, on car magnets for The Living Poetry Project, and most recently in the journals Queen Mob’s Teahouseand Meniscus. In her non-writing life, she practices yoga occasionally and line dances on other occasions. She blogs at http://alifeofwe.blogspot.com and does everything else at www.christinamrau.com.
In case you missed our 6th reading— or if you didn’t miss it but would like to relive the experience in podcast form– you may now stream or download it through the Soundcloud file below!
A galaxy of gracious thank-yous to everyone who helped make Reading #6 such a trip: William, Stephen, Christina, Leona, Mazzara, Joanna, and Anthony for performing your flappy lits; Pacific Standard for your warm & welcoming hospitality; Alibi Jones for your sparkly singing & fine photography; and all you beautiful star-children who came to watch us boogie. Let’s do this again, say, sometime before Memorial Day…?
(photos by Alibi Jones)
William Lessard reads from his space-agey story “Transmission”
We’re gonna sparkle & boogie as we celebrate the flight of our 9th issue with our 6th reading on Wednesday, March 23rd from 7 – 9 PM at Pacific Standard (82 Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn).
FLAPPERHOUSE 
