Alex Niemi

Untitled

Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a monk and the stone is cold the rooms are cold and my balls are like peanuts. The room is like a brittle knife. The air is like a brittle knife. I have the heart of a worshipper my hands are covered in ink my hands have no hands to hold but my own. I shrink like drying parchment and the pages are illuminated they illuminate with monsters of god.

God makes many monsters many monsters make him back.

I etch I tear my eyes his eyes I have no eyes to gaze into but the eyes fit for the heart of a worshipper.

Instead I check my email.

                        RE: RE: yr a raccoon

Internet animals are the holiest of holies they don’t have to feed. Once I left my grandfather’s best saw in the juniper bush and said nothing when he found it rusted 2 days later. The raccoons always got into the garbage next to their house by the paint cans.

                                                By the paint cans.

                                                By the paint cans.

Committing black magic with a chartreuse word by the paint cans. I want to be lifted by them.

There is a girlish fantasy about other girls haunting my mother’s mouth.

Beasts of no intimate weight.

I have no eyes to gaze into but the eyes fit for the heart of a worshipper.

Alex Niemi translates from the French, Spanish and Russian and writes poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dusie, Buenos Aires Review, Iowa Literaria and the anthology Devouring the Green: Fear of a Transhuman Planet.