limited edition of 100
art by Kristy Bowen
(2018)
20 pages
dear imaginary daughter—
You are heavier than you look. Constructed of bone and air, you hook your fingers into the soft parts of my neck. Ride shotgun over landscapes filled with rusted out cars and rotting trees. In the beginning, you were small enough to keep inside my totebag, but now you want more. Warring with strangers on the internet, riding roughshod over dreams filled with other feral children, setting fires and fucking up machinery. In the museum, you keep rescuing the poor taxidermied animals and bringing them home. The living room fills with patchy leopards and moth-eaten zebras. There's a box of beetles under my bed. A cache of dead birds in the fridge. They sing at night the way all dead things do, like their lives depend on it.