Little Apocalypse

___________________________________________________________________________ little apocalypse ° Kristy Bowen ___________________________________________________________________________ NOCTUARY PRESS Buffalo, New York Little Apocalypse © 2016 Kristy Bowen Layout and Interior Design by Kristina Marie Darling and Sunnyoutside Press. Cover artwork courtesy of Kristy Bowen. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electrical or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, or posting on the internet, without the written consent of the author, artist, or publisher, with the exception of short excerpts quoted in articles or reviews. apocalypse theory: a reader ___________________________________________________________________________ MY APOCALYPSE SCENARIO begins with wasps and ends with too many raccoons knocking over garbage cans. It's all mongrels and barbie dolls, and nothing to do with jesus. Only a small breathing, some quick hearted thing moving under the stove. I was doe-eyed, dolled-up, and standing in the center of a ring of ponies when it came for me, the circle collapsing inward with the weight of its own emptiness. My apocalypse theory was nothing if not crudely wrought. Nothing if not over the top. We referred to it as the "scottish play" but everyone knew better. All the small horses wore exquisitely embroidered headpieces and sad caged looks. The end of it all was at the end of a great big rope. The end of it all was moving faster toward us, but always farther away. MY APOCALYPSE THEORY begins as a tiny machine, gears turning over and an approximation of feathers. My apocalypse theory is inconsolable when I say no, huddles underneath the overpass and calls me at 3am. He says there is too much Texas in Texas, too much wideness. I tell him what doesn’t kill him makes him stronger, but he keeps adjusting the wax wings on his back and mumbling about airplanes. There is too much highway in Texas, bright and clean and filled with tax dollars. Too many open spaces and combustibles. His gears crud up with oil residue. I imagine him with a smear of ash across his cheek and a pocket full of rusty bottle tops. I imagine he is holding a match and just waiting for the right wind. MY APOCALYPSE THEORY needs more white space. More space around the thickness of things. More space suits and dirty go-go boots. To say it was a party would be a lie, but sometimes it was like a dinner gathering of your very best assassins. Knives in the bundt cake and everyone eyeing the cadavers. I needed more rope, so we made a game of it. Made a harness out of bed sheets and lowered me down. At the end of the week, I had eaten my way through the beginning of things and was starting on the house. Had sharpened my incisors into tiny points that hummed when I touched metal. Everyone kept throwing up all the broken doll parts. My fingers were slick with all that sugar. THE PHARMACIST LOVES MY APOCALYPSE THEORY like a son. His nights are full of snow and broken dishes, but he’s all about the bad decisions. I still have my mother’s hands, and sometimes, they fumble over details, stumble against door jambs and make a teakettle sound. Hand over hand, mind over matter. People were dying in their parked cars and I kept dreaming the bed was a boat was yet another bad decision. The pharmacist spent too much time jaywalking and not enough time adjusting the optical illusions. Everyone’s retinas were scarred and wide like scared deer. Everyone’s hands looked like my mother’s especially when they were washing the dishes or especially when they were waving goodbye. MY APOCALYPSE THEORY always says California like that, slow and full of vowels. Like it's a state made out of pink cotton candy and dead letter offices. Made out of water, room temperature, still in a glass. By now all my insides are outsides. All my outsides tethered against me like enormous stuffed animals. I fear going mostly because I fear I will never come back. I fear coming back because it's mostly like going over and over again. My apocalypse theory loves the revision. The overwritten mix-tape. Loves my insides, the actual inside not the made up, made-for-tv version. My apocalypse theory always says California like it's a threat. MY APOCALYPSE THEORY teaches me how to get radio signals in the filling of my teeth. Teaches me the cut throat, the lindy hop. I loved the gin, but hated the broken clocks we kept having to throw out. I was joking when I said my ears were bleeding, but I was bedding the strangest men and my wires got crossed. I called it my wreckage period, only in french. My blue suite. I kept emptying my purse on the bed and searching for quarters. I've been stockpiling air fresheners in the laundry room. All I need is a paper bag and a candle. MY APOCALYPSE THEORY likes it when the hillsides are all on fire. When I place my hand over his eyes while driving. The flicker, flicker, of passing headlights. In the abandoned paper factory, all of the chairs were chained to the floor and I had the strangest cancer, like hundreds of pigeons stopping up my lungs. I needed a gas mask. I needed a drink. The inside of my mouth was lined with silver nacre and slippery. Really, I was bleeding all over the place. Going down and down into the furnace until my hands were blistered and peeling. It was the worst sort of trespassing, but the best sort of torture porn. I used a rolled up newspaper as a lantern and kept coughing into my sleeve. My apocalypse theory likes my hair when it smells like smoke. My apocalypse theory likes it when I don't say stop. MY APOCALYPSE THEORY is patient, but only so far as I keep to the itinerary and don't complain about the nausea Mostly, I'm troubled by bridges and faulty ball bearings. Obsessed with braided objects, broken machinery. I keep losing my shoes along the sides of roads we never return to. My apocalypse theory talks about plastics and nuclear energy as if they matter anymore, but really he's saying I love you with his eyes. With his dirty fingers. He's a little amazed when I walk into traffic. And still a little amazed when I walk out alive without a scratch. WHEN MY APOCALYPSE THEORY WAS BORN, I was wearing a wig and crying alot. All sewn up, all sold out. I carried a rope, a rape whistle in my pocket, but my vowels were still sugary and soft like warm bread. My apocalypse theory was just beginning to see the error of his ways when I placed a bullet on the table. Said go for it. Here is the lamp. Here is the desk. In my bedroom mirror I practiced a swedish accent. Drew a perfect line in the dust on the dresser. Here is my bed. Here is the end. There goes my baby. Over and over again. I bought fake compass at the end of a shiny gold chain. In my apocalypse theory, everyone was always falling down while running from something. Everyone was always falling. ALL IN ALL, MY APOCALYPSE THEORY needs more disaster. Locusts and birds plummeting from the sky. A swimming pool full of beautiful, doomed, starlets. We arrange chairs in a circle. Make up chants about god, wave pinwheels and tiny flags and misread the stars. I wear a mask, but it's a mask over another mask. An outline of a face over the place of a face it used to be. My apocalypse theory lacks teeth, but what it lacks in bite, it makes up for beautiful insects, smashed and legs akimbo on the mounting board. Call it pheromones. Call it ferocious. I'll be half gone before you even know I'm here. MY APOCALYSPE THEORY scatters beer bottles across the porch. Is all armchairs and armegeddon when the power goes out. But my shoes are all lined up, toes pointed at the door just in case. I was drowning in the beginning, but what I lacked in oxygen, I made up for in radio static. My apocalypse theory likes my hand in his pants sometimes, my mouth as warm and soft as butter in the dish. My apocalypse theory is nothing if not resourceful. I have six rolls of duct tape and a vase full of plastic dahlias. I have a pool cue and a mustang beneath a dusty tarp in the garage. I am nothing if not ready. WE GO OFF GRID, off our guard. Specialize in intersection, vivisection. My apocalypse reflects like a sonofabitch, but it’s the horizon you need to watch out for, lined with tickertape parades and abandoned Chevrolets, We take only what we need: The purest white stationary dotted with roses. A toothbrush. A hand grenade, I can hide so many things in my mouth by now, it’s ridiculous: batteries, cyanide capsules, packets of splenda. We take only what we need but then we need everything. Razor blades, dead matches, tiny exquisite miniature bears. My apocalypse theory watches as I cauterize a wound on my thigh with molten sugar. A bruise on my arm from some barnyard, backyard, back of the bar violence. Everywhere we go, I keep collecting maps. Keep them quartered and small and damp with spit.

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