Projections of Projections of Her

By: Genevieve N. Williams

Unease bumps inside the body of a fly

that bumps against an unknown wall

in an unknown room. It’s Chinatown,

Chicago. I’ve locked myself in

the McDonald’s bathroom. A hand-dryer

hangs by two cords: home

and someplace else. A fight ends

as quickly as it began, and I open the door

to a calm that exists only after unspeakable things.

An artificial waterfall tilts to the left, and blue

nights rise from grease and gorgeous women.

I can’t say why, but I want to be the man

in the bottom of a dried-up well, who thinks

he can gain the answer to everything

if only the sun will burn perfect circles

onto his hands. Or maybe I just want

to lick the shadows from your walls,

your yellow-wallpapered walls,

your imaginary endings. Later,

I will throw them up into the toilet.

Who am I kidding? I will not take

on any more of your little deaths,

your half-cocked confessions. I will

not force the handgun from your hands

or lie by the couch to keep you

from ____________. An empty bottle

of McCormick’s sits in your freezer door,

and I have better things to do than imagine a you.

When I left, I realized you never knew me

from the projections of her. You never knew

that I never knew you, either – not really.

We were forever each other’s mothers –

or some bit of history that never existed. Who am I

to say you were wrong for calling me

a whore? I know an artist

who says words are meaningless,

that we assign them power when

they needn’t be anything but shapes on paper.

He’s a pseudo-intellectual hipster cop-out,

but that doesn’t matter. What matters is this:

A man stands on top of a rock, pregnant

with a lobster that is really his mother.

He rests his hand on his uterus,

closes his eyes to the wind.

I share a card table with a woman

whose ears are cow’s ears

and whose feet are pig’s feet.

We’re in the middle of a gravel road.

She smiles a knowing smile.

A foo dog charges through

my apartment door, morphs

into an aging monk, and slouches

against the kitchen counter.

He asks for a glass of water.

My father is there. In my waking

state, a black shadow swooshes

from the alcove of 20s Showgirl.

We have all seen it/him/her

and we’re not saying anything

to anybody else about it.

The rabbits are eating our peas.

Nothing will remain as it was before.

It’s possible to pass on traumas

to our children, DNA changed

forever by epigenetic expressions.

It’s also possible to pass on positive

shifts. I like to imagine myself

happy, though my parents

lived through unspeakable things.

I dream myself into wells of absurdity

and wallow in shallow waters.

A falcon tips into the gloved hand

of a little girl, and a fly dies

on my headboard. She has

the weightless body of a barn swallow.