I want to heave the beams of a house where I will keep a garden and goats and and all of you safe, because even though all of you aren't yet born I love you, desperately, and lay awake at nights wondering whether this is the place for you at all. Because the world is harsh and dirty and cruel and you're so unafraid of all that because you don't know how badly they can break someone and how carelessly they will do so. It's easy to trip on the front path and skin your knee, but that's just the beginning of deeper and less fleshy betrayals of your trust to come. I can't change that about the world, though, or at least I can't change it in whole so I want to build our own secluded kingdom in pillow forts and rough-hewn hardwood, and I'll hang wind chimes on the porch and sing you to sleep each night over a snack of apple slices and keep fresh books on the shelves so that even on rainy days we won't be walled in. But I'm walled in now, with this and this and reluctance to forgo dreams that aren't my own. Until I find someone, anyway. Because I think we share this dream, and that's really all it takes.

I brought the war, by Callista Womick

Repost from tiltfactor:

The following is a response, or perhaps companion, piece to Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War. 

---

I didn’t go- none of us did.
They thought we went, but we didn’t. 

Here. 

We were here.
They didn’t think so, so they screamed at us
and shot at us
and wanted us to die.
“Maluus zebr” they said about
each of us in turn. 

But here it is, I still have it. 

And this- see the dust
still caked into the fibers?
I shouldn’t have it, they have rules about trophies,
but this is from when we were bombed
out of bed-
well, I wasn’t in bed. 

I couldn’t sleep, so I was bare and wet
in the cement shower house.
I knew I was going to die.
I sobbed under one of those
crummy metal sinks, waiting for the walls to cave in
on me or a mortar to drop into
my lap or my crazy heart to just explode. 

But they didn’t and it didn’t and it didn’t,
but maybe I still did. Die. I feel dead.
I’m not a man anymore. 

Please don’t look like that.
I don’t mind.
I’m good at what I do.
I’m a killing machine.
I’m a god. 

This is what they make of us, and they’re damn good at it.
I was in basic with this
scrawny, nerdy wimp from
Minnesota.
Ethan. Ethan Brown.
Most boring-ass name ever.
He’s a sniper now.
He could hit you right between the eyes-
equal distance from each-
from 2000 meters.
You wouldn’t hear a thing,
and then you’d be dead.
How about that scrawny nerd from Minnesota? 

Babe, don’t cry. 

Yes, I like your dress.
But you know I like green on you
so much better. 

White, hell, I don’t know how tokeep anything white. 

I would touch you,
but you look so beautiful.
My hands are dirty.
Yes, they are. Look at them.
LOOK AT THEM. 

I’m not shouting.
Ok, I’m sorry. Please don’t cry.
The dress is beautiful. 

Then why are you crying? 

…HIM?! 

THEY KNEW?! 

You didn’t write.
I wrote to you. 

No. 

No. 

No. 

…I remember.
I’m not sure than I can, either.
Not since. 

Please don’t ask
me now.
I’m so tired. 

Who knew that the dead slept?
I always imagined we would torment
the world of the living after nightfall.
Who knew that it was the other way around? 

I’m tired.
I’m so tired.
Here, hold me.

Visit the Last Real Net Art Museum for more works inspired by My Boyfriend Came Back from the War.

POV I: The Girl

"She looks like a mannequin. / As if by law of nature, a stripped woman's body / looks like a mannequin..."

-Aural Heather

I count calories blown and calories spurned.
I run each day and count calories burned.
Each calorie lost is a calorie earned.
To enjoy the hunger- this I have learned.
I keep notes and journals, tallies and logs
about losses and gains, crunches and jogs.
My ass and my arms, my stomach, my thighs:
A few of the parts of me that I despise.
I may eat Mom's cooking, but I purge it away
even if it's all I've tasted today.
Every hour I check to see how much I weigh-
I restrict for a week for each ounce that I gain.
My hip bones are showing, but the fat still hangs on;
it sags from my sides where it doesn't belong.
My obsession is measuring how much is gone.
I starve and I struggle, but always stay strong.

People are dirty

And they insist on dirtying this beautiful planet with their existence. Myself included. I wouldn't be at all offended is some superior extraterrestrial race did decide to swoop down upon this pitiful planet and annihilate our entire species in order to preserve what decent spans of nature remain, just like those people from that convention are convinced will happen any moment now. I think we deserve it.
Let me explain:
I went for a walk today. I carried a couple plastic grocery bags with me. I figured I'd pick up a little trach here and there and maybe gather some recyclables besides. That was my neat little plan. Well! People quickly got in the way of that, they and their nasty, dirty habits did. I returned after eighty minutes with four grocery bags overflowing with refuse: only one contained recyclable materials. And I only picked up along one side of the road.
Care to guess how many cigarette butts I picked up? Go on, guess. Frankly, I have no clue, and I have no intention of counting them. Rest assured that I probably have a representative from every major brand sold in the United States, not to mention an empty packet to match! I appreciate the sentiment of whoever tossed the half-smoked pack. I do not appreciate that of whoever tossed the ziplock bag with the used condom. Styrofoam cups. Plastic cups. Fast food bags. Coke cans. Beer cans. Beer bottles. Milk jugs. (Milk jugs?!?) Cigar wrappers. Gum wrappers. Candy wrappers. Ambiguous rubber tubes. The tops of those cute little "Doggy Do-do" bag sets- y'know, it's all well and good to clean up your animal's excrement, but get real: it's biodegradable, the plastic bags are not. I found five of these. Maybe more. Stopped counting.
Plastic water bottles. Do you know how much oil it takes to retrieve, refine, shape and ship those bottles? How much it takes to retrieve, purify, filter, ionize, florize and whatever else they feel the need to do to the water? To combine the two? To transport the workers who carry out the process? To transport the finished product to 'convenient' locations nationwide? Worldwide? Dump all but about three quarters of that water (it's probably just tap water at best, laced with carcinogens at worst). That's how much oil. Per bottle.
I was passed by cars, trucks, vans, buses, delivery vehicles, and a single motorcycle. All chugging along, burning fossile fuels, filling what would otherwise be clean, healthful air with ozone-depleting, foul-smelling, physically harmful fumes. Few slowed down. Several honked. Whether out of encouragement or derision I care not to know. A couple informed me that I have a 'nice ass.' At least none were so indecent as to throw any half-full slushies from the 7/11 at me. At least.
These are the creatures that think themselves greatest of all the beasts- man has brain! man can think! These are the ways in which they demonstrate their superiority. Forgive me if I point out the inconsistency that it isn't exactly, um, intelligent to destroy one's habitat. If we observed such behavior in any other species we would be appalled. Well, start worrying! The end is near! They are coming! But, in the mean time, I'm going to keep picking up your litter. And if you've any desire to retain the right to inhabit a planet as bountiful and diverse as this, you better start, too. Those people from the convention have some pretty compelling proof.

Turn the Radio Up

On the way home from work today I passed a man headed in the opposite direction. He appeared to be in his forties. Probably around 350 pounds. And driving one of those power wheel chairs. You know, the kind advertised on TV by two elderly women who ride their chairs all the way to the edge of the Grand Canyon and sing out "HoverRound-!" (echo echo echo) I guess they'll take you anywhere so long as you've got the time.
It's a shame that this fellow doesn't have anywhere better to be than Podunk, USA. Then again, maybe he was headed off on some great adventure and I just happened to catch him at an awkward moment. He had his headlights on and an American flag flying from a pole, like the triangular flag that your all-American boy of the 50s had on the back of his bike.
Perhaps he is on his way up North. I mean way up North, to the land of igloos and dog sled teams and Northern Lights. It has been his life-long dream to participate in a dog sled race, and now with his new power chair he can do all that and more. He will not only participate in the race, he will win with record-breaking speed, all the time his little flag waving- a proud indicator of his heritage, a beacon to all American youngsters who dare to dream big: Go ahead, kids, supersize your meals!
Then again, maybe he was just heading towards the little diner on Main Street to shoot the breeze and chew his cud and engage in various other aspects of friendly country society over a big, home-cooked supper. Chair, flag, biscuits'n'gravy. Welcome to the South.