=envelope art=

Recipe for a Black Hole Supper

A little bit of something

spread over nothing

the taste of

makes half a loaf

you better not be too hungry

the other half you’re on your own for

¾ cup of

i forgot the

2 eggs

corn starch

baking soda

        or the holy spirit

mix to the point of confusion

sugar until your teeth whine like a chainsaw

the punchline

preheat oven to the temperature of hell

& wait eternally

walnuts

a dash of salt

something or other to taste

serves all of you if you cut it thin enough

think microns

enjoy what you can
while you choke on it

=sissygirl illustrated #14=

=sissy blackboard=

=Acts 6:15=

=I woke up in the middle of the night thinking=

=sissyangel=

=A Little Prayer for Nihilists=

Anytime I hear the word "we" I look around

dumbfounded. "We?" "We?" Who is this "we"
they're always on about? It's got nothing
to do with me. I'm just reciting little prayers
to nothing because we aren't getting more
than this. When I see an infant I think:
who—who was so satisfied with Alzheimers
and bladder cancer that they dragged you
to this party? I'm guilty of always seeing
to the end of things. Life, the palimpsest 
traced lightly over a skull. Everyone has a little
taste of hell under their tongue. Like Tiresius,
I have a problem with my eyes. I figure my
allegiance lies with the ancient astronauts.
The fish has not yet come. The appetizers
have been cleared. You are playing with
your knife as the bombs explode across
the tablecloth in tiny silent plumes. 
With my fork, I taunt a pea escaped from 
the innards of some devoured pastry shell
around the flowered circumference of my
plate. Would Jesus have worn mismatched
socks? How many calories in a crucifixion?
Whither flies the cream canoli?

=The Moon in the Man=

On the good nights, dad kicked the footrest up on his ratty old easy chair and lay back in his boxer shorts and t-shirt, a gin glass in his hairy paw. He told us about what it was like to be an astronaut. He told us about life in the lunar module, the weightlessness, the naughty jokes astronauts told each other, the spite, the jealousy, the petty bickering of men living in such unnaturally cramped quarters. Feet up, drifting in memory, he looked like he might still have been strapped inside a space capsule orbiting 200,000 miles above the earth. He told us about walking on the moon. "This was after the Armstrong and Aldrin days," he'd remark, a trace of bitterness in his tone, the ice clinking in his glass, "when the romance and glamour were over. These were the moonwalks no one talked about. When the real work was done." 

He was making it all up, of course. Like when he told us he once played a few games for the Boston Celtics before he injured his knee or the time he served as an Army Ranger in Laos. Maybe because he began telling us these stories when we were so young, they've somehow become so inextricably woven into the texture of our lives that they don't seem like outright lies even now, but more like declensions of the truth, whatever that might mean. In truth, he worked in a factory that made something they put in televisions when they still had factories in America. He fell in love with one of his co-workers when I was nine, shortly before the factory closed. He and my mother divorced soon after and we moved to another state and I didn't see much of him anymore. 

"It was the only place I ever felt truly free," he'd say wistfully, speaking of the moon, his glass empty, even the ice gone, crunched resentfully between his molars. 

I can still see him taking the dog out for the last piss of the night, standing there at the back of the yard, smoking a cigarette, the moon shining off a bald spot floating over the hunched, resentful shadow of a man, who never looked up.

=belled=

Daddy decided that just having a pink bow tied around my sissyclit wasn't enough humiliation for me. So he cooked up the idea of having me attach some jingly pussycat bells to the ribbon as well. Now he can hear me anywhere in the house. i make a very pretty tinkling music wherever i go. It says says "here comes sissy!" or "there goes sissy!" 

Sometimes Daddy makes me stand in front of him and says "Jingle for me, sissy" & i have to bounce up & down on my toes which makes the bells go crazy. Other times he makes me skip back & forth in front of the couch, which, I have to say, is particularly embarrassing. He laughs & shakes his head. It always surprises him, i think, just what a sissy i am, even though we've been married for 5 years & he knows me so well by now. That's probably what surprises him….that my seemingly limitless capacity for the most perverse submission, obedience & humiliation has come to seem so ordinary! It's just a part of everyday life. 

Best of all, which is to say, the most humiliating of all, is when he makes me play with myself. You can tell how excited i'm getting by how much commotion the bells are making. So far, i haven't been able to finish a song yet :( i can only imagine what they'll sound like when i'm finally allowed to cum. Probably like the bells of Notre Dame. 

Look, i have bells instead of balls. Can there be anything more appropriate for a sissy?  

=sissygirl illustrated #13=

Anytime I hear the argument that something must be good or right or normal because most people like it—I wonder: is that really true? Do most people really like it? Most people will never admit that they'd like to have dirty, unprotected sex in a public restroom with a dangerous stranger.  So who knows what the hell they really think about anything? They'll never tell you. They're too afraid. So everyone just goes along pretending they like what everyone else likes and condemns the rest. It's safer that way; safer to be normal, safer to pretend, safer to be fake, safer to be like everyone else. It's why the majority of people one meets aren't worth talking to at all. Why the world is barely worth living in, life hardly worth enduring—the world and life, that is, outside of one's own imagination.

=sissy blackboard=

=Report 891.78K=

Yesterday I traveled to Saturn and back. It took me less than two and a half hours, round-trip. The length of my stay was variable, either three years or the time it takes to butter a slice of toast. While there, I met my real parents for the first time. They hugged and kissed me and said they were very proud of me. Then I was taken to the Home Office where I was introduced to one of the associate editors to whom I’ve been sending my reports all these years. He was younger than I expected and taller and had less eyes. He told me to keep up the good work and suggested more naps. When I asked when I could return home for good he said not for a while yet. “We’ll send someone, though, when the time comes.”

“Cancer?” I asked. “Heart attack?”

He shrugged. “Not sure. We were thinking maybe a runaway hotdog cart?”

I was back at my apartment in time for lunch.

Everyone wanted to know if I saw the rings of Saturn and what they were like. At first I told them the truth, that I didn’t see the rings at all, but they seemed so disappointed that I started making up more and more elaborate descriptions just to make them happy and they were.

=Allegiance=

(for Edward Snowden & Chelsea Manning)

When our country

     spies on us

invades our privacy

     we no more want 

            to think about it

than we want to think about

            what daddy does

when he creeps into the 

                 bedroom in the middle

            of the night 

                              or catches us

                              still damp  

                              from the shower

when our country

              drops bombs

on villages killing

               innocent children, women,

               men,

we pretend it doesn't happen 

like we pretend

we don't hear

mommy falling to the floor

and begging not

to be hit again

              and when our country 

destabilizes rightfully elected

governments, 

imprisons, assassinates, and threatens

populist leaders who won't obey

               and installs  in their place

enabling

puppets

we get the message

& we deny it the way we deny

that daddy becomes a stranger

when he's been drinking

                                  and does things

he'd never do sober.

                        And the more you insist

that daddy is violent

& out of control

                        the more violently

we'll deny it until we become

just as violent in his defense

as daddy himself

                           because who wants

to believe that their family 

is fucked up beyond all reckoning

that their bed is full of worms

that the man we've been raised 

to love and respect and honor

to see as the highest form of good

in this world

our protector

our model

our author

that this man

we depend on for everything

is not who we thought and were taught

to believe he must be

                      & now that we've seen it

just in a glimpse through a crack

in the door, heard it in the terrible 

threats echoing through 

the heating ducts where we 

crouched by the vent on the floor,

who wouldn't want to run silently

on tiptoe back to bed, crawl 

under the covers, pull the pillow

over their head and stick their fingers

between their teeth 

and pretend all is well 

because I ask you

where can you go

to whom can you turn

just what are we supposed to do about it?

Who wants to admit to having seen 
what they have seen,
heard what they have heard?

Looking kindly into your face,
with his hand on your bare knee,
Daddy asks you,
Do you really want to betray me?

No, Daddy, I don't.