liveAudience

LCooper

Sitting with my back resting against the neck of that giant beast–an elephant with the legs of a tree–I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it–the feelings, motivaitons, the gumption that would move someone to carve anything into that beautiful beast. Let alone the potentially superficial/temporary highschool relationship. “Blasphemy!” cries Oscar Hopkins. It was the closest I have ever come to riding an elephant. Dropping, dragging my hands–slapping that story saturated grey flesh. Following the curves up and down, I imagine that I am affectionately petting this exotic yet familiar beloved beast. I take great comfort in the forgiving tree. The way–the imposible way–that it seems to acknowledge, accept and then look past the violent scars of momentary love on its flesh. And these giant arms and legs continue to grow–cotinue to accept all that amatuer artisan poachers leave behind. The forgiving tree–forgives more than me.

dg

Sliced off a bit of thumb.

Amanda

Trinity

1. (demolition)

The light here is too bright, it tunnels my vision, and the room fades. I narrow in on the words before me. Shit storm she says. Again, she says. Funny isn’t it, how it always comes down this way. She was the first to leave behind flesh stitched together over days of hammer swings and chipped charred drywall, beating her back with the raw iron of my crowbar. She signs the letter, always, I’m alive, luv you.

2. (eradication)

I am in that kitchen again, hot tea and discomfort; it is too yellow. The curtains clash and vibrate off the walls. They are chipper and talkative, serving cut pears and suggestions. They want my commentary on their observations of my life. It is a story that doesn’t include me– the narrative purposefully bright and shallow–it is supposed to slide past my soul, my body, but it gets caught there– twisted inside out, torn between the poles of my life, between obligation and desire. There is no reconciliation, it is a structural weakness that none of us anticipate.

3. (anticipation)

It is an inferential leap, setting faith aside for good. I am preparing a place for her to cut through, a shadow now where the scar will be.

Rebecca

To Y, the man I killed. (Some sense I made for you and the methodology)

image search–”shaped hole”
search–sampling of the results from the first five pages of images: phrase (number of hits)

D shaped hole (3,930,000)¹
dad shaped hole (3,140,000)²
product shaped hole (2,420,000)
right shaped hole (2,420,000)
special shaped hole (2,360,000)
bow shaped hole (2,340,000)
bowl shaped hole (2,230,000)
lamp shaped hole (2,190,000)
oddly shaped hole (1,880,000)
goat shaped hole (1,500,000)
heart shaped hole (695,000)³
pentagon shaped hole (667,000)
penis shaped hole (552,000)⁴
diamond shaped hole (377,000)⁵
teardrop shaped hole (366,000)
you shaped hole (343,000)
god shaped hole (309,000)⁶
nose shaped hole (304,000)
turkey shaped hole (251,000)
ethics shaped hole (155,000)⁷
tri shaped hole (178,000)
coffin shaped hole (114,000)⁸
almond shaped hole (86,600)
urn shaped hole (70,900)

Notes
1. I asked my mom why certain words were capitalized and others weren’t. She said she didn’t know. What she probably meant was that she didn’t know what I was reading and so she couldn’t tell me why a specific author emphasized some words and not others.

Depart.
Desert.
Delay.

Demote.
Duck.
Dial.
Deform.
Defile.

Devote.
Devour.
Dire.
Distress.
Desire.

Deep.
Darkness.
Death.

Dance.
Dance.
Dance.

2. Pat Robertson’s coverage of Purity Balls explained that the covenant of virginity between a father and daughter precludes the otherwise imminent “dad-shaped hole” the daughter might have to endure. Robertson cannot overstate the danger of the dad-shaped hole. Y always liked to say he had fathered himself because the father who had raised him had never actually recognized him as Y. His father had raised someone else, he said; he had raised a daughter and not a son. So Y was Y’s son.

3. See eight.

4. They thought there were two on him: dearth and depth. In fact, there were none.

5. A diamond had most likely broken his teeth. 2 karats, the report said, given the size of the what bruises were not also torn or pulped.

6. I’d like to point out that there are more instances of “goat” here than there are of “god.”

7. In a lecture a few years later a professor described aporia as an ethics-shaped hole. Now I know aporia is an expression of real or fake doubt, especially doubt about where to begin or what to say. Again the Internet asserts an example:

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. (Hamlet. III. i)

8. See three.