CHELSEA BODNAR
lonely deadgirl seeks unkillable love interest
From: The Ring (2002)
You wouldn’t want me straight-on, center frame: put me back in television,
floor, put me back in your bathtub; a mouth that asks wrong, hair in drain pulled
out all dark and matted. Killed off all native speakers in my language,
I, all settled in the bones of house like blood in vein of deadgirl. If scale’s
too small, make copy, make video of crack in wall that twists away to eye, make man (insists
it’s hoax) split down his sides. Make camera catch on figure,
magnify, enhance, still frame that comes alive and drips its pure black static on
your realworld. On your mirror – on that thing that scared you sober, got your
ghost and shook it back to skin.
From: The Ring (2002)
You wouldn’t want me straight-on, center frame: put me back in television,
floor, put me back in your bathtub; a mouth that asks wrong, hair in drain pulled
out all dark and matted. Killed off all native speakers in my language,
I, all settled in the bones of house like blood in vein of deadgirl. If scale’s
too small, make copy, make video of crack in wall that twists away to eye, make man (insists
it’s hoax) split down his sides. Make camera catch on figure,
magnify, enhance, still frame that comes alive and drips its pure black static on
your realworld. On your mirror – on that thing that scared you sober, got your
ghost and shook it back to skin.
Chelsea Margaret Bodnar is a bloody handprint on that car window in Titanic. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in: The Bennington Review,Leopardskin & Limes, Menacing Hedge, The Birds We Piled Loosely, NANO Fiction, and others. Her first chapbook, Basement Gemini, was recently published by Hyacinth Girl Press, and is a collection of poems about horror movies.