Dear Ethel Cain

I sleep in the sleep I’ll die in. My heartbeat says too soon, too soon. A hand on god’s eyelid. Nothing.

The angel of the zeitgeist thinks death is a lover of short films.



It was a game I played with my sons. Like this: It was cold, and my brother was dead. My brother was dead, and the music said drink. The music said drink, and I sang god down. I sang god down, and god bent himself to a moment in Palestine. God bent himself to a moment in Palestine, and he was othered by his own brain. He was othered by his own brain.



Time uses god to tell time.
I drink myself to life.
Nothing outside of Ohio

is there.

electric Mary
sings pretty songs
now;

never sad.

isn't that funny?

some eel
swims in her
eye

and she sings of
birds

Are you now
knowing now is
            {never now}
but rather

shuttered with false
teeth

the dogs ****
in frictionless ghettos
eyes wide and hard
like gems

the gross nice teeth
whitely blanched
come down on the raving tongue
drenched in
sea-salt and mercury
to become a mass
unregulated by design,
tinseled with
the heads of dolls;
their black button eyes
are sewn onto the
sun

who flinches and gnashes
like an insect in a
glass bell


new to
pain.

sit darling
      do sit

this is no new crime

yes this has been done before many times

           its all very regular I assure you
the procedures all the rage

                                                     its easy
                                                          really­
all you need is a little blade

maybe a sharp spoon


and perhaps a clear glass jar;
                 yes, a Mason jar, that'd be quite appropriate.

and you simply scoop


and you don't stop scooping -- stop squirming, darling, this is important--

until you are sure,
you are sure its quite well and gone.



and you place it all in the little jar and seal it up,
all nice and tight--

so nothing can get out, you understand.

and then you're all finished-- don't cry, darling,
its finished, see?

There's nothing there now.


Don't you feel so much
lighter?


                    If only I knew what it felt like
                                      it must be
                                     exquisite.


Isn't it exquisite, darling?