Obelisk Series
Reverse
Pieta
002
Freddy
Ruppert
OBELISK SERIES
SOLAR LUXURIANCE 2013
unsaid, it is the vagueness the body slips into that has the
horror.
When Mom died she was
titless and bald headed in a cross of wires, bones slabbing
and fragile. I tried on every pair of her gristly panties.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.
Guard me as your property and possession.
Guard me as your property and possession.
Guard me as your property and possession.
1. Her hello was laden.
2. Her hello was a deadfall.
3. Her hello was the gutter.
4. Her hello was
I keep a few
shoeboxes
of
photographs but no matter how
I twist them nothing drains out. Who’s to say
you don’t shape them how you want them? In
another box: a rattling of microcassettes, the old
kind used for answering machines. I can halfresurrect the voice between pinches of static.
Maybe I am mixing them. I have a few
shoeboxes of prayer cards but no matter how I
molest them nothing drizzles out.
..................
I started to visit textile stores in search of bruised
headscarves. Once, blessed in a headscarf, I glittered in her
bed. My body so far from her scabbed map but still, I acted
out her death every day:
eyes white,
spittle knots,
sandlotter’s rash,
atrophied sockets,
dust thrasher.
trapped,
wallowing in antique smell
buries his nose in the carpet
licks for cast off skin flakes
flakes so tiny that flies could not harvest them
he opens wooden trunks and fondles clothes molt from the
old days
flings open drawers and inhales the thick iron stank of
crusted rosaries
he greases the burden
our lady of perpetual help - guard me as your property and
possession. amen.
I inquired at the hospital regarding the infected block of
backbone they had pried from you. I was under the
impression—the assumption—whichever — that there
must be some sort of storage space for such bodily
removals. The plan was to have the exact same piece of
my own spine removed and have your infected chunk
implanted. Then, I would lie in your bed, in the same
position as you, and wait for the sickness of this foreign
bone to overtake me.
hell,
was born,
the exact,
day,
i made,
the decision,
to relive it,
and in reliving it,
the decision,
to exploit it.
Dear Our Lady,
I am fine but it seems that I am having trouble reaching beyond
the last two weeks of your life. I have memories of your pulpy bed
sores, your tremors, your cracked lips flushed with spittle, your
thin frame swollen with ghostly knobs. Beyond these, I cut through
webs, some gray, some stark as jissom, and come up with nothing.
I watch home movies in order to remember the way you watered
the lawn or folded the laundry into crisp little stacks. I had an
argument with brother. You always said to leave a needy piece of
chicken behind. If you eat slowly your stomach protests when it is
done. Brother said no. Brother said you made him sit at the table
until all that remained was sauce. Drops in a glass. Who lied? I
used to call Dad. I would have him tell me stories of when you
were dating, of life before I was born. Would you believe that I still
call that old number? It just rings and rings and rings and rings.
Your eyes of mercy toward me,
The Son
Imagine the wheat of heaven burning,
the fields crowded with motherless sons lead by Mary,
massacring angels with bow knives
A group of shirtless boys in nothing but their mother’s lace
An angel- castrate him on the spot
The sack of flesh
held aloft,
the body goes limp,
the boys cry out
Agatha of Sicily, holding severed tits on a platter,
weeps the joy
Another angel held down, his throat slit
As he gargles he is gang raped by a line of erect eagerness
Angels are skinned and their fatty flesh chewed upon by the
rioters,
their blood drunk from golden goblets
Let all angels be
castrated
Let their flesh
and their blood
fill the hearts of all motherless sons.
Amen.
“Mother had been missing for three days. In my sleep I dreamed
her walking through wood singing:
Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulierbus
Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus
Sancta Maria, Sancta Maria
Maria ora pro nobis, nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae
Amen
“A man-goat the size of a giant, fixed with a crown of thorns,
trailed her, jealous of the song. With his cloven hooves dressed
with gifts of golden apples he seduced Mother deep into the
wood.
“The next morning I awoke to hear Mother’s voice singing:
Dominus tecum
Benedicta tu in mulierbus
Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus
Sancta Maria, Sancta Maria
Maria ora pro nobis, nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae
Amen
“I felt my body rise from bed in a trance. I staggered out into
the woods on the edge of our property. I didn’t know where I
was going. The voice was leading me. And then I found her, in
a ditch, marked with the smell of blood and lust, with three
days rot upon her naked dead body, snakes crawling from the
inside out.
“The hordes came and lined up to see me, the grieving child.
They brought meats and cakes and liquors. They stayed for the
next 40 days.”
On the second day reinforcements came.
Angels from the three highest rankings:
1. the Hayyoth
2. the Ophanim
3. the Erelim
We suffered casualties. Our front line was beaten back.
However, the angels had sustained a grave blow: the
betrayal of Mary who lead the motherless and provided the
maps of heaven. Some of the boys began to wear angel
clippings smudged red with gut.
“Onward my sons!
Our hearts are ripe
And we will not stop until Heaven is paved with the
innards of swine!”
By the sixth day, stinking of corpses and fornication, we
reached the Temple of the Father & Holy Ghost.
But to our disappointment it had been fled.
we
set
fire
to all carcasses left in heaven
.
.
.
Song of Gladys:
“Ma, huh, quit.”
Her eyes remain open, stiffened
to a ceiling spot.
“Ma, Ma, Ma, huh, ‘
member, used to sleep in yer bed,
huh, Ma, huh.”
He looks Gladys over.
“’Til was 13.
Had to get my own
bed. Get my own bed cuz of
the sticky sticky. Huh, Ma, Huh.
My lil Satnin Ma.”
“Bought you that pink cadillac, huh, Satnin.
Huh Ma. Bought you it.”
You worried your mama right into the grave and out
walked the goat.
Song of Mary:
hail—scorn of—fat grief—sluggish suffering — loitered
womb —snarling of nails—betrayed & gnarled—glory be—
protector & saint—succumb—succumb—succumb—take
from my mouth swollen worms—shifting tides—spattered
hope — windfalls—glory be, new mother—glory be, surrogate
mam—hollowed—greased
burden—dust
thrasher—
wallow—wallow—wallow—pity goat—the titless martyrs—
bid—wrath—throned guardian—protector—pale enshriner
of mourn—some dead lifter of sorrow’s tender side.
The youngest son
nurses with knuckled blood
Mom,
What is it about your
T
R
E
N
C
H
A
N
T
memory?
I sucked the clay from your phrases, parsed the blocks from
your mannerisms, built a towering saint, an untouchable
martyr.
The truth is
I can’t even remember how it sounded when you said
the word
Hello.
When I feel particularly mournful I drive out to the farthest
gas station plopped on the last stretch of this hell. Once there,
I nest down in the toilet stall and pillage my hole for dead red
hunks to flick onto the back of the door.
A PRODUCTION OF
SOLAR LUXURIANCE
OCTOBER, 2013