the Witch lives
\nin a televised serial
\nwe watch her shadow darken
\na spare shot every 3 episodes or so
\ntides pull out of & into the Witch
\nwhen the moon swings she wakes with bellyaches
\nshe fingers herself most mornings
\nshe’s lonely the Witch aren’t they all
\nshe eats cold chicken feet
\nshe buys by the dozen
\nfrom the Piggly Wiggly up Stillman
\n& then it rains
\ninside her house + yellow sugar melts
\nwalls contract
\n+ slide down their sugar studs
\nshe opens her wide mouth + drinks down as much
\nof the sweet flood as she can
\non the flood the cast of the TV serial
\ncrew a small vessel a prop from episode 7,
\nbased on a true tale of water escape
\nthey are all experienced manners
\nof the vessel on set
\nthey know the lines to say & the lines to pull
\nbut then the Witch accidently
\nswallows them
\n& they sail up the dark hall of her throat
\nlike a kernel of pepper
\nthe Crew’s all a-titter
\nin her
\none of them lights a candle their only
\none + wax drips down onto the floor of the Witch
\na Witch is hollow inside but for the undercurl of rib
\nstuck in muscle + fat which is now the ceiling
\nof our world
\nthe Man-With-His-Shirt-Tucked-Under-His-Belly proclaims
\nhe thinks he’ll make captain
\nyou step forward to blow
\nout the candle + thereby preserve some
\nfor next day + day after + etc when presumably
\nyou\u2019ll still be stuck inside the Witch
\neveryone is mournful without the light
\nthey just float in the night-long silence
\nbut in the morning there\u2019s a surprise
\nsunrise inside the Witch the enlivening rays
\nof the sun cheer the Crew + in the sun they see a worldfull
\nof green + yellow continents + blue + purple oceans
\nto explore + surely there will be seasons even
\nwell hang me up by the cocktails it’s
\nNew Jerusalem the Man proclaims
\nbut no one’s listening
\nanymore & you look over
\nat the Bestfriend character
\nyou’d been behindscenesing with
\n+ think of the stone cold Natives
\nyou\u2019ll meet in the New Witch
\nwho’ll wear clothing made
\nfrom incredibly thin fronds
\nof palm + ferns who’ll have
\nan entirely different code
\nof comportment involving
\ngroup massage + weekly
\nritualized coupling maybe it’s time
\nto be just friends
\nthen the Witch fingers
\nherself scrapes herself bare +
\neverything inside the Witch
\nwhen she comes jiggles like an egg
\nbefore it’s hardboiled &
\nat last she digs a hole
\na very deep one to live in alone
\nthe end<\/p>\n
the Witch lives in a televised serial we watch her shadow darken a spare shot every 3 episodes or so tides pull out of & into the Witch when the moon swings she wakes with bellyaches she fingers herself most mornings she’s lonely the Witch aren’t they all she eats cold chicken feet she buys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[12],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-24b","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7947"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10207,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions\/10207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}