contents:
cw: murder, rape, body horror, sex, torture, self-harm, religion
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fever room
It's coming up again. In casual conversation and not. It screams red in my face until I shiver myself awake thoughtlessly repeating memories again and once more. I am so tired but they don't shut up. Practically licking my ear they tell me they will die on this hill: the face of God smiles constantly (they have me pinned now) but generally does not laugh. Will he make an exception for me?
I'm sick to my stomach. In crying death throws last resort self defense squeeling thrash, my body, my fucking body, speckles bruises blossoming across my skin, the last resort, the last defense between them and my flesh, me. My mouth is full of tears. It stinks like me. Get the fuck off of me.
I close my eyes and picture this inside my head: inside my head there are ants crawling through my brain and they (God, it hurts) are reasonably happy. The ants are fine and happy. If I listen closely and think of plum nothing I feel each six leg, two feeler ant walk at a normal, calm pace. I time my breathing to it.
I breathe in between retches and the one big bruise body, skin, buys time. They have claws. I am trying to breathe. Pounding, pounding I hear not God but close hiccup, I imagine beside me maybe closer. One big bruise, not empty, they're tossing around screaming. Feed me. I'm not empty.
It's coming up more and more these days. Pinned by a mob mostly human carving dead things in the folds of my brain. It's happening everywhere.
The bruise bursts. Lightning strikes twice now three times past my skin through my limbs screaming someone is smiling. Someone is smiling. Yanking nerves out of the socket, tying off veins, hitting bone against bone. Someone is smiling. But you can't say that anymore!
...
Six legs and two feelers stand perfectly still. There it is thankful. It's tired, too.
gift of sweat
How hot it felt in the short walls how nightbled and how daydone the shrinking room was where I imagined my body, so much of it—take notice—not bleeding a bit. Hours past loud in the stinking dark it was only tumbling I was doing along trips and jokes carved in full stale concrete. I prayed for toppling. Metal’d changed; it was different from when I was a kid; its new shapes, how it was hunked out, the heaps of it—now I stand laughing at it, but there were years there where thinking on the full of it spun me crumpled in deignings headached to feel bellyfull fingers press on my creases then bin me.
It's the fog that gets you. I ran through it on gnawbone with a gift of sweat, high art, growing thin under sunk. It was meant to be seen on glass. Three panes painted with little paintings pressed inside, delivered by calloused feet. But—it makes me itch whenever I admit this—I was hungry. I just wanted to feel it against my teeth. But what I felt was more hunger; my eyes lost focus; my tongue flinched. The glass had new cracks.
I held the work wet close against my sweat with my right hand on its left side and on its right was my left hunking over thought and then thought throwing this at the wall: I wouldn't notice the cracks; I wouldn't notice a thing—to look at it for the first time, there was so much to it!—so much of it was not cracked! I told myself: I wouldn't notice; I'd look where the cracks weren't. My mouth was full of something. I personally wouldn't notice it; I, like anyone, wouldn't notice a thing.
Now! I am a fool! I noticed nothing and my tongue was under it! It was a clear thing I cared for; to look at me, I could be seen as holding nothing but cracks. I am worse than my sweat. I begged the world to be full of fools with virtuous eyes unfocused. Like anyone, I wanted to feel it against my teeth; I was, put simply, hungry and like anyone thrown at the wall thought after thought left begging for fools I took hold of the lonely one way like back there under shrinking like how glass reacts to metal how cracks in clear panes (lined with a fool's spit still hungry and the wrong clear) can disappear and meet no one new, losing cracks in shatter, only tumbling, brought to thoughts of toppling.
I emptied my hands.
I am a sorry fool asking to be scratched.
The fog can get to anyone.
Mr. I'm Serious
Confounding gilling pill bottles brim foaming sniffing all road long I holler alone and weep and lick wounds teary laughing so loud I don’t hear you when you ask, politely, who are you and where is this. I laugh. There aren’t many walls to this room but there are a few, maybe a dozen the last time I looked and thought to remember what I saw, maybe a couple more now or, hell, hell, a few less, hell, you speak to me, a lesser few. There’s a line outside this room, you know. People want in. I don’t mind; I really don’t; I am not being polite; I don’t mind letting myself my dance my machinations wind slower down a bit more just a fine bit to hear you over myself. I don’t mind. Ask me again: where exactly on a fading antique map valued at a wealth-giving sum of modern euro would you place, exactly or thereabouts, would you or someone like you place a tack denoting my request, something simple, where it—I must stop you there. Thank you. Dance he-heh hence ah-ha-h I ask you to crawl and whisper for me; I know your request is quite polite—I am not being polite though I do know—I do know—how it looks. Speak clearly low whisper; I’m telling you: map, a map gross yellow someplace I don’t remember was here about last business day. You missed it. I couldn’t begin to tell you the last thing about where no tack fell under air floating around this room these dozen walls the map or my finger. The line is waiting; I say this for their sakes, to be polite, crawl, crawl around. You’ll want to be sitting when you hear this. One dozen networks now, currently at the moment, project you, I’m serious, to be the next president, leader of the free world. I told you to crawl. Make an L with your leftmost hand to your lefthand side, an inverted L on the inverse: your rightmost hand to your righthand side. Raise them up and squint. There’s a facsimile of a frame. Mr. President, calm tremble less let your hands wander widescreen and see this: this room one dozen walls walking in. Queer subtextual marked-up uncleaned drywall dented in spots walks in politely waiting congratulations; congratulations, sir; I’m telling you: it’s a hot one. Antique forgetful torn-up glued paper you could unfold and learn how to read—the paper, you could learn to read—the paper, the paper could teach you to read, in general, even outside. Last business day, fawning some yahoos floated in map hungry asking about satiation, begging for it. They ate it five-layers dis-unfolded thick chewy and cut their tongues. Paid good money, too. I’m not saying you’re not or that you’re not polite or that you’re impolite—I am—confounding medium rare patiently waiting, wall walking.
in the scream-car
I am so tired. Once it was wafting but now my wrists held together its hard spins could well pang and plat anything away bent and broken and uprooted. Oh. My parents have bowed their heads and closed their eyes and I am with you in your camera car.
DRIVE ME FASTER! Cut corners and put me past the mirrors inside the tires’ lines (asleep and grooving lines) sliced and tire-torn. Anything on Earth could go inside me.
You taught me to beg for death such that death could not end my begging. You will chase me barking spittle around hell forever.
I know everything about this model. The woman at the dealership called it gray but in the sun I feel all over deep tiny points in my skin start to peel open, my inside out, left free for what God wills inside me.
Oh, yuck. I am driven up roads so steep as to appear as dots on maps. They meet in the black sky and the tiny, stupid car slides off one road and onto another. I scream on the way down. I piss my pants and sit in the warm.
I’m buckling. I have thought way too many words in my life and I want sewn back up. I want limited by God. As a parting gift my best friend once sewed a blouse into my skin over the course of days, and into that blouse another blouse, and in that blouse in ever-echoing nausea I burped and hiccupped and still felt naked.
When it all runs red I am finally covered. I died once during sex, it was my fault, and God yelled at me. I blinked then had only black yet to see.
kilby, whose soul outlives him both ways, won’t give up the littlest laugh, or: “Laugh For Me, Kilby”
Kilby Kostrim, sweating, dreaming about the last job, hit his knee in his sleep. In the corner stood the three of them almost ready to joke.
"Thursday." The shortest wrapped the sheet round his fist and pulled. Kilby twirled in waking spasm (cold!) and his wall walked towards him through the blur (naked!) but (cold!) three intrusions three figures made him close his eyes and hope to wake up again, cold! naked! He spun again sweat drenched to hide himself.
They stepped closer. Three well-lit white-faced professional strangers smelling in his room. One spoke: "Christ, someone loves you. What business do you have having a life like this?" Another yacked out a laugh.
Kilby couldn't stop closing his eyes.
"Buddy, what on earth," he went on. "You're kidding with me. Quick. Quick. Who do you think I am?"
The tallest was in the corner folding Kilby's sheet now.
"Let's play a quick joke."
The heaviest grabbed Kilby by the ankle. The tallest sped the ceiling fan.
"Uh, my—" Kilby almost said before his foot yanked high and threw his face down. "If you would please—"
"The joke has no rules. I only want you to laugh."
His foot hit the fan.
The tallest man yucked and put his own finger in the fan and yucked again.
"Please, sirs: if you let me I will tell you I love God. I love God. Will you forgive me my debts?" (Into the fan again.) "Please. I will tell you my soul outlives me going both ways, forward and back. I love him. I love God. Had I said that, could my debt weigh less?"
"I only need you to laugh."
"But my God fell out of time and atop it. He watches himself hang everyday as he watches himself wander and heal and try to preach and die for it. He sees every death every day. He is atop it."
"He's talking like an every-death, an all-suffering doesn't fall from my cereal box every week," the short man said to his friends. His friends laughed.
His foot hit the fan again.
"Laugh for me, Kilby."
"But if I told you what to say to God to let yourselves love him more, if I told you I loved him, could I settle with only a smile?"
Again, into the fan.
"No, Kilby. I only need you to laugh.”
for lack
I am desperate for, to put it exactly, a queer relationship but I just keep dating my father all over again, slipshod and curdled twenty-years-old—or, now that I think on it, nineteen—me, one year older, thinking I see myself inside him but it's just the same once-lunk now as skinny as his old twig arms useless and nerding away without me in sight, curdled, stuck in my head, smarter there than ever he really was.
I am desperate to be squeezed in two and my rubbage-half discarded. Hold me; I will forget I ever had legs for you. Squeeze me until something approaching goodness bursts from my needy babble. I am bereft of a homosexual mirror; who sees themselves when they stare at me?
But I’m thirty-five now. I want only to lay beside another and breathe the same room’s air. Yes! I am desperate. But so much as graze mine upper arm against yours and I will roll completely off the bed and to the doorway striking my head and my groin as no doorframe’s width accommodates my horizontal height while rolling.
Ow! Ow! Should you know anyone please tell them of my needing. For lack of a better world, I am desperate.
all attics
He is the most beautiful product I’ve ever seen. His eyes are almost open. He's purring. It actually hurts to look at him.
My hunger is a small pallet of bricks affixed by rope to my waist. Each day a new brick is laid atop an old brick. I swear within the stacks I can feel which bricks are the heaviest.
Six hours ago he fucked me. He's whispering out my door, “Never tell anyone about this.” That's okay. I am trash and have no need to tell the world someone has stepped on me.
I think I still reek of him. Even as I’m sure whiffs reach them, my friendly neighbors all feign not smelling a thing. I’ve actually fallen into quite the neighborhood!
At night every house is pushed right up against each other. All the attics shift one house over.
I’m nice; I’ll set bowls of water up there for any attic-napping cats but I’m not much of a snoop; I don't care about files or old photos. I for one hate seeing myself show up in my neighbors’ albums. I always cringe and shiver. I tear those pictures up but they get replaced.
At night all the walls are double-lined. I am dead quiet. I feel nothing but him inside me. I feel nothing but my missing him.
I found a photo of him once with his arms around me. I took care to only tear at myself.
All this stirring ruins my insides.
It actually hurts just to look.
dilke
Eyeing after-market airplane paint pallets Dilke Bilgowe owner and proprietor of We Paint Planes Waxing & Shellacking saw something like heaven briefly before him. Just as it burst, Bilgowe saw inside that white bubble some beautiful man behind him dance.
“White cobble blick-proofed 100, eh?” the man almost sang to him.
Dilke for a second lost himself. He said red: “you think really these old hands, painting and peeling full one hundred?”
“You'd do it well,” the man smiled. “I’d reckon, really, a plain and gentle touch to the wall, so soft the paint doesn't feel what's happening. I see it in you. I see it in your tips.”
It was hot. Dilke mumbled a kind of nonsense in his head and felt hotter. “You reckon,” he said. He felt his legs moving.
“You could call me Heywood.”
“Heywood,” he said.
The two men found themselves back behind each other in the back room with “Men” written on the door.
Dilke felt him. All breath left him and empty he let his skin unfold scratched and torn where the black lines of soot under Heywood's nails met his skin and desperate stole some and dirtied up more.
Some other man was washing his hands, looking barely at the mirror. He heard nothing.
Dilke felt color inside him.
The door closed unlocked.
Rising then falling over then over he felt himself spread against him, rough, against undone jeans, unbuckled belt, undone button fly. He flinched. Please hurt me, please hurt me, Dilke thought.
Dilke wanted torn apart.
A whimper fell out against silence. Beating faster and then faster something quiet dripped from their eyes; Heywood felt bigger and then bigger.
Their boots squeaked. Back against chest leaning overlapped they each came and melted, stupid and emptied, in public together.
Through tears the world was wobbling.
…
“White cobble blick-proofed 100. Three gallons across three cans. Your total's right there.” Heywood turned the small digital screen to face Dilke.
Dilke handed him a folded bill. He touched his rough hand against his.
Out in his truck his hands held the wheel tight. Still a smell of paint. He carried him with him for days.
He was dirt in Dilke’s eyes. He still felt him.
no hissing
I do not feel my skin but a murder below me; I was kissed once; I felt stoveburn and watched all fall all ways now always from me, growing tiny and dim.
They sat me down. They warned me about hissing—there were tones volting around tile earlier. They repeated them for me and my eyes flinched. My eyes shook: little bits of sad, gold fish bowl, redding oss and ever. I sensed in them a belief that they must hurt me.
They told me useless things. But I fell down and in love purchasing wound after wound for you.
Hickle-up: you ninely held me, and I felt it. Would pink wither on the dolls, off the dolls—I felt picked; I had to be you—now, it wasn’t something like that, how big that small lot was. And I was there again and again and around me the sense was there that they might hurt me when I saw you and sundove in eye-shaking love purchase grown from home and out there further.
Oh, I tell you, you’re getting sunburnt all over me. I am planted. I am then covered.
There’s a caving-in, an inward flinch; I am in dirt, part of a thing that is folding. It turns in me; I feel it—the dirt—play with me, stirring old things up. I am embarrassed; I picture above me you smiling with my teeth and, I tell you, the dirt runs warm.
I am in deepness and there is no hissing; it all feels so known to me, all purified until uselessness.
adeline palbor (c) 2026