INTERVAL
The deciduous holy
The fantastical violence of their myths became more attainable as their systems sophisticated horror. Their data is their story. But they had no projections of themselves, no one to build the fiction of their memories. The moon made jewels but they could not quite archive its light. Tattered lumps of sky kept slipping into the sea. Actually, the feeling of leaving is not transcendence, but breathing in sharp stars, filling the body with spikes of pain. Did they need symbols? This they eventually reached as a question to ponder. The small passwords and the colossal stone simulacra. Over every intention the visor of ambition. They were carefully socialized to be magnanimous, to find the single bird in its cage after the death of its mate and kill it, finding the left behind unbearable. And the lights went out. It was so dim and difficult in the way that used to enrage us—the nighttime blindness was not from exhaustion or poverty, but power. They overcame. All differences are differences in power.
This selection comes from the collection Ghosts, Models, Visions, available from Bloof Books. Order your copy here. Our curator for November is M. Mack.
Ginger Ko is the author of Motherlover (Bloof Books), Inherit (Sidebrow), Comorbid (Lark Books), and Ghosts, Models, Visions (Bloof Books). Her poetry and essays can be found in American Poetry Review, The Offing, VIDA Review, and elsewhere. You can find her online at http://www.gingerko.com
M. Mack is a genderqueer poet, editor, and fiber artist in Virginia. Ze is the author of Theater of Parts (Sundress Publications, 2016) and three chapbooks, most recently MINE (Big Lucks Books, forthcoming 2017). Their work has appeared in such places as cream city review, Cloud Rodeo, Rogue Agent, Menacing Hedge, and The Queer South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). Mack is a founding co-editor of Gazing Grain Press, an assistant editor for Cider Press Review, and the monster maker behind What Is Reality Plushies. Find them at mxmack.com.
