b(rat) I (house [fire])
living light & hiding-like,
a fire in the basement,
a landlord
owing nothing
(even after she
nearly froze
the snake alive),
the cold, a shedding thing,
proximate to capital,
sterile & fright-less,
dribbling over the grease-wound,
the sex-scent of hollow dividends,
the image, a refraction of labor
breathless & bending
under the convex heat
of presentation,
automation
sans affect, sans strife
(is this what it is to be brittle?)
& in her 2013 short film,
How Not to be Seen:
A Fucking Didactic
Educational .MOV File,
Steyerl writes,
“to become
invisible, one has
to become
smaller or equal
to one pixel,”
& this here is a new lease now
(fragile whisper dashed
too soon)
the too-common
voice of less-ness,
to be born
all intestinal
& wavering,
(a means of crashing),
bile dripping pores
burning holes
in the carpet, burning holes
in the basement, bespoken away
w the rest of skin
i read Bell’s Austerity
in a single night; tomorrow,
at the bookshop,
i chat football
w Mr Tucker,
i say “this is called
‘being spritely’
now,” re the acts of speaking
on the equal
& opposite
pressings of flesh
w my eyes closed,
w/o u;
i search, “does being
a professional boxcutter cowboy
make me less of a faggot?”
less of a cactus-killer,
beaconing away,
brightly boiling my slinging fingers;
i eat naught but candy & sleep today
i don’t think i want to ruin my own life anymore III
i kill my job & lull in the quiet
wanting feel tiresome these’m days
i kill some more breaths & roll in the
cold, covered in my monster-teeth,
knucklebones, hatchets, crows,
that one kind of torture where rats
burrow thru yr guts & its counter,
tweeting about Being Relatable for two hours,
i shower & bleed in the heat,
crass & clear- headed, winning best-
rat-king-love, been-sober a green-y steam
filming my lil corpse, my brokerage for getting-bys,
resting-house-plain for now, for here for you, now
Faye Chevalier
Faye Chevalier is a Philadelphia-based poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbook, future.txt (Empty Set Press 2018), and her work has been featured in The Wanderer, Peach Mag, Witch Craft Magazine, the tiny, and elsewhere. Some of her awards and recognitions include being the first ever poet to have work published on a cyberpunk tabletop rpg podcast (Neoscum 2018) and also a Pushcart nomination. Find her on Twitter where she cries about cyborgs, vampires, and having a body at @bratcore.