Maggie Wells is the author of Pluto (The Wrath of Dynasty) and co-founder of Be Witched, an art and literary event machine. Her work has been featured in Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present, The Cadence of Hooves Anthology, Nailed Magazine, Free Lunch, Inquisitive Eater and others. If you look hard enough, you may also uncover her advice column written under a pseudonym. Maggie currently lives and DJs in Nashville, TN..
Maggie Wells
Bright Blight
I close my eyes
when politicians speak
because there is logic
in darkness.
Maggie Wells
Bright Blight
Welcome to the Ballroom! Step in and emerge! Diseased or cured!
-- The Divine Host of the Universe
I close my eyes
when politicians speak
because there is logic
in darkness.
Sometimes men gather
in important rooms
and talk about violence
against women
because they own it.
Purity is power
the men at church explain
with panting dicks.
Take that sick feeling
and vomit
on no one
and everyone
wandering
with bottomless sacks.
This ecosystem
is the ecosystem
you can’t escape
You wander like Aribel,
through the points on a compass;
a serpent with a woman’s head.
Silence falls even
amongst the terrified
mother birds.
The neon Aspen leaves blink: No Vacancy.
No forest
is large enough
to accommodate the sickness
of humankind.
Listen closely,
the bears sound so cute while shunning us.
At this moment
there may be
a king and queen
devouring your home
the workers
the soldiers
all of them blind.
When the floor falls
beneath your dimension
it will be replaced
by reaching hands.
They fall away too.
The hunter’s moon
is a bright infection
telling you to want things
you could never want.
Stop looking at me.
Water swallows up the Earth
and with the stretching forth of clouds
takes the heavens
as its own.
I will hold your head
in the river
should you seek God.
If the day is divided into fifteen equal parts
I will come to you on the sixth
to observe
the devils
you call your familiars.
Give me your devils;
I like to carry them
around bound
and enclosed
in rings boxes little vials.
Milk and honey,
black rooster blood,
the swell of cicadas on audio cassette.
Make an offering
now
it’s already too late.
A goat of many eyes stands
with two hooves
on a thick hunk of wood.
In the center of the slab is a chalice
aching for his blood.
We’re all having such a nice time.
On the night of the missing moon
we learn the spirits of darkness
are stronger in the dark.
To drive them away, lights and fires should be kindled
by the corpses
of the dead.
Take my matches; I’m sick of all this,
I say.
Buried in the streets of none
Are my embarrassments.
I walk away from them,
get nowhere.
Shame just keeps strangling me,
I say quietly into the microphone
of your mouth.
I need the waves to stop pushing heaven
when I’m busy carving my grave.
Stop filling these holes,
I say.
My recreation center
is a dark pool of water.
Petrified bones breathe at the bottom.
I was once amphibian,
I whisper.
Paint the void
to recreate the world.
Paint the black last.
Focus on the emptiness
surrounding poppies.
The negative space between
droplets of light and liquid.
You are each of these things.
I am afraid of running into myself
high up in these mountains.
I am not sure where I am
but these cliffs look familiar
and I can be very frightening
in my silence.
_________________________________________________
Maggie Wells