FANZINE

being born is having cum inside your flesh from birth. when i opened my eyes, i was surrounded by ombré flames in chiffon wrapping. they blessed me with oily pores and a scowl made of overweight pine nuts fighting over how to pronounce a racial slur correctly. i dreamed of large bodies plucking their eyebrows and impregnating simple moon scars into their elbows. their hair smelled of grease and prussian flowers and their breasts covered by white chiffon made their skin humid with fitted slime. i asked about gender and they replied with a heart on a hacksaw.

 

“hold yourself, brethren, hold your arms inside your chest, hold the hollow pit on the edges of your slime and give it to those in need of a front door smile, brethren, you can choose a cliff to fall from and we will catch you by the breasts and hose your mouth to full capacity.

brethren, peel your eyes,

behold, behold,

you will be the sacrificial lamb that fucks in the basement on four legs plus arms, exotic slew for a plentiful slaughter.”

 

i found out that growing up with all white people makes me want to sign petitions. by the age of 11, i was a pro petition signer at my local orphanage. i signed petitions to save baby walruses, to clean up oceans by drinking less man made liquid, to further the cause of skin wars by eliminating all skin from all everywhere. i too, like others, imagined a world where all of us could walk around with no skin at all, our guts hanging out and acid in our stomachs popping, bubbling up and down, throwing thunder kids into people’s faces and saving millions in dollars on the 1st and 4th of july for political correctness. my end goal was to sign a petition to make it mandatory for everyone to always wear stomach caps in public to avoid unnecessary firing of stomach goo, kids are alright ricocheting off people’s faces.

 

i sometimes feel myself growing thick green skin that covers my entire body. i imagine it secreting a thick, warm and sweet liquid that shelters me from insects and humans. i mostly just sleep, waking periodically to suckle on thin fibers that drop sweetness inside my mouth, but i never open my eyes and everything is always warm.

 

possible reasons my lucky stars died before receiving genetic instructions to carry me and dump me in a basic conjugal – 1) a glass of milkshake, mixed in with white powder, rat germ poison in cardboard rolled, mashed, extra froth, here’s to your lungs. drink it up, yellow eyes, jaundice fever spreading, separate chinaware, apples, apples, eat them for better you keep your hands alive. i didn’t go to confession and no one ever knew.

2) took the no.165 bus to downtown montreal, a little lady, soft skin and old compliments my headband and asks where i got it, simons, she’s surprised in the best way and stares at me in tenderness, words can’t begin to ask everything about my face. i look in the oversized bus mirror and the top of my head estimates the number of times i pray in one day, on my knees, under a cold forehead.

 

there are dreams of desert that plague me in winter. these dreams are the reason winter is my shelter from the world. i have chapped lips and pigmented rash in these dreams, water smells like camel and urine when my throat bathes in it readily, the infertility of my voice is as barren as my dream. i wake up a thousand times and sleep only for a hundred. i imagine someone accepted and more talented than my dream self sleeping next to me. someone who looks like kathy acker with her eyes closed, someone who breathes just so i can embrace the gift of her intellect and claim it as my own. that someone never wakes up, sleeping soundly on the blue plastic container from target in the corner of my room. i pee heavy amounts of lemon water and mountainous salt & they never wake up. i make sure the cheap $5 dollar fan is pointing in their direction because i can offer them only raw wind crawling with tiny sand in every color except my own.

 

quick facts in lieu of an auto correction – what? have you ever tried speaking without the same tongue as the deemed most kosher people as voted by the elected majority? i have no tongue, i can’t physically afford money to belong. being thrown out of my neighborhood depanneur when the snow can’t quit, the rice grains and twisted fabric threads smelling nicotine, i’m beautiful to someone and most of them haven’t seen me without my winter jacket. the love part is tricky, you can’t suck on a tongue if you have none. it’s lonely when even the graveyard makes tears into vogue photo shoots, chic like the ‘90s when earth was spared me, grass vomiting crystal fires and nothing soft that you crave hurts you. i frequently resort to eating apple slices when perfect girls with thick silk washed in coconut, look past me. chickens are one of the most abused animals in all americas, but i’m sure it’s abused everywhere and by humans of all brains and other predators. i never thought i could save a life till i saw deep fried cauliflower heads cut into baby flowers, the sticky sugar made me ultra hygienic and i timed every toothbrush for its life and appropriately amputated its limbs for trash day. i’m blue inside and blue because of city snow, my knees hurt every time i jaywalk and the ground opens up slightly, my feet leave dirt bones to carry them closer to lava, to a heart.

 

P.S:

3) nausea. face down. toilet seat. i empty my guts save the lies, birds and coffee to kill a virus of an early morning burdened uterus. burdened, feeding on my gender pity. i fail my gender when i fail myself. everyday on public transport.

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_{Nooks Krannie is a Palestinian/Persian female writer from Montreal, Canada. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, I have hard feelings & I wish I could quit chocolate (Moloko House Press, 2016) and candied pussy (Thistlemilk Press, 2017). Insta: @nookskrannie}