Author: Zoe Conner

Dionysus, I’m begging, but he’s choking me with grape vines
to watch me turn purple, then green, and his eyes
are dripping, pouring. I’m asking, is that for me?
Yes. His voice is that that of a hundred crying babies.
It’ll make your troubles a little lighter. The panther looms
in the jungle behind ivy, ears back. soft. scared.
Dionysus is flicking away a patch of marble on his cheek,
spitting bout how they chiseled him rotten
and how he preferred bursting from his father’s bloody thigh
more than that statue. He’s smiling at me with a thousand teeth
and three jaws, grape juice and slobber dripping off his tongue,
carved like a gothic pitchfork, all underneath the canopy
of two thousand birds circling above, waiting. ready. hungry.
Baby bird’s sharpening his wings and snapping his dull beak in half
to have shards, screaming obscenities in form of a light tune.
Thunderstorms in the distance. Don’t worry, Dionysus is laughing.
He’s spitting teeth and liver on the ground. Dad doesn’t visit here.
Divine snot is running free from Dionysus’s nose, and his teeth
are glinting three thousand bottles. Take a sip, he’s saying.
And then we’re kissing ecstasy, his lips rigid like a wine bottle.

A deer freezes in the bright of candle light,
mistaking it for a headlight. Flash those doe eyes
that will one day become marble, walk on hooves
that are yours today (as a keychain somewhere
salivates at the mouth, waiting to hang them),
take naps on car hoods that howl laughter
at deer crossing signs. But start running, little doe,
your dad’s antlers can’t save you forever. One day,
they will hang in the house whose grass you’ve grazed
your entire life.

A moth mistakes light for a savior, a lifesaver,
rushes in to catch flame, erratic behavior. Burns in the air,
surrounded by water vapor that will not help.
But do you remember those nights in the basement—
no lights, only fire between you and I—when we ate
each other’s clothes alive? I clipped your wing
that night. I don’t think you ever forgave me.
You wanted a brighter fire, longing for the savior
I could never be.

Be careful little bunny, grab carrot root for loot
but don’t mistake it for mean man’s boot. Rely on luck
from your foot, even though it will one day be chopped off
and sold as if it never belonged to you (how lucky
can it be?) Flaunt fur and kiss strangers, have babies
because you’re afraid of being alone. Bite my lip, peel it open
and fill it with bunny teeth so I can understand all of the words
you are too afraid to say.

I want to swim in whiskey waters, become champion
of fight club, melt plastic cups of ramen in the microwave
and eat it anyways. I want to spray paint the police station–
but something nice like “have a good day.”  I want to wave
at the cops with  the residue on my hands, daring them
to arrest me.  Find fortunes fall from the ceiling tiles,
Love poems stuffed in the dashboard of used cars.
I want to feel the love and fortune, pierce my ears
when I’m angry and pop them when they’re infected
without flinching.  Dye my hair a new color every week,
shave it when I get bored.  Follow bike trails drawn
under bathroom counters, right beside the picture
of a chicken laying an egg.

In 1980’s New York, there were these people that would jam turnstile slots with something like gum wrappers.  Then they’d wait for someone to stick a coin in, and go suck it out with their mouth.  All for $1.50.

Of course, tellers started catching on.  It became an epidemic, and the victims who put the coins in would be let through because it wasn’t their fault.  They were losing a lot of money.

They began putting chili powder and mace to stop the kids, but the coin-suckers would just come back with buckets of water, throw them on the turnstile slots, and then throw the rest on the tellers.

Of course, there are so many diseases in that line of work.  Many often fell ill and couldn’t continue or even died.

But police officers could do nothing about it.  The only real solution was putting a cop at every single turnstile, but that could never happen.

Finally, New York was forced to get rid of the turnstile slots.  The system couldn’t stop them, so they were forced to change it.  Maybe the coin-suckers didn’t set out to change things, but they did.

I think that all is really beautiful.

But I want to know if buying gum became suspicious, because many often used the wrappers to stuff in the machine.  How did they carry buckets of water without people noticing?  Who taught them?

Roodharigendag is a Dutch festival celebrating natural redheads.  I looked at pictures, and there isn’t a single person there that doesn’t look like a natural redhead.  But I have many questions.

There has to be people that aren’t naturally redheads but try to get in anyways.  How forceful are they with removing them?  Is it like a “Hey, please leave”?  Because I feel like there would still be people who found a way in.

Is it like beat-you-down-to-the-ground and the last thing you see are waves of red hair?

There have to be wigs and things.  Is there a test you have to pass?

Furthermore, I read an article supporting Roodharigendag because apparently redheads are often discriminated against.  They compared themselves to African-Americans, who were literally enslaved for hundreds of years.

There was also a man that ran a mob in Japan, but he was caught recently in Thailand because his tattoos went viral on the Internet.  He was just living the life of a modest farmer with a modest wife, but his former employees still brought him money.

I remember as a kid, I used to love lovebugs.  My parents would curse them because they’d cover the car in guts, but I found it to be the car’s fault.  Lovebugs were just trying to live and mate.  I used to play with them all day during their season, trapping them in my hands.  Sometimes I’d shake them like maracas, peeking to make sure they were still alive.

My parents called it cute.  But they didn’t see that I had accidentally suffocated them.  They didn’t see the broken legs or bug guts staining my hands.  Then I’d go try again because I wanted them as pets.

The truth is that it wasn’t cute at all.  I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself.  It was selfish and irresponsible.  I’d feel terrible when they died, but I’d shake them off and just do it again.  I wasn’t trying to kill them, but I also wasn’t trying to think of how they felt.  I just pretended like I was.

My parents said I loved too much, but did I?  Did I love them at all?  It didn’t matter to me, all I had to do was wipe them off.  There was no blood on my hands.  I didn’t have to bury the bodies.

I used to release red balloons into the sky after storms because I thought of thunder as the sky coughing.  I’d watch the sky swallow them whole like red cherry cough drops, and I thought I had done a good thing.

In reality, I had probably killed animals that way.  They most likely choked on it.  Those plastic balloons will never degrade; they’re just there forever, and I can’t shake them off like lovebug carcasses.  The earth wasn’t coughing; it’s dying.

It’s dying because of you and me and all the plastic balloons released into the sky and all the things we disguise as love.  I didn’t love those lovebugs.  I just didn’t want to feel lonely.

The truth is that it doesn’t really matter anymore.  We can’t singularly save the world, no matter how many cough drops we give it or how much we want to love it.

The only way the Earth will be okay again is when it eats humans the same way it gave birth to them.  It’s our beginning and our end, and in a million years it will be like we never existed.

Everything that is here will one day be erased.

Every famous name you know won’t matter, even Albert Einstein.  Everything here is bound to die.  That leads to a word I was obsessed with for about two years: entropy.

Entropy (n)- gradual decline into disorder

So what does it all mean then?  Life is pointless, right?  Nothing matters?  If we can’t do anything to last, then what can matter?

You matter.  You, your friends, your enemies, everyone you love and hate.  I think the point of life is living, to be happy and to make others happy.

My own meaning to life is happiness.

I was a really smart kid.  I would sit in the shower and sob because I thought too hard into the meaning of the universe and how it was all a void that would never matter, even if I did go to heaven.  I was so terrified of slipping into the void, of nothing to matter.  What was the point?  I wasn’t happy.  Why was I here?

But when I started living, I realized it.  We shouldn’t build anything to last; we shouldn’t try to.  The point to life is personal happiness.

Going to work doesn’t matter.  Being productive to society doesn’t matter.  Society won’t be here soon enough.  We’re all just ants in the bigger scheme, even George Washington.

So stop following the colony.  Have the ants ever considered wandering off, going to faraway lands?  Why build this mound your entire life on the outskirts of Paris?  Go see the Eiffel Tower!

Power doesn’t matter.  Money doesn’t matter.  Not to me, at least.  Getting a stable career doesn’t really matter to me.  The truth is that I know that I will be fine.  I will be happy even if I am living on the side of the road.

It really doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.  Be yourself.  Blow all of your money, be crazy.  People will point and laugh.  Get bad grades if the subject doesn’t interest you.  People will call you an idiot.  You will know that they are only cogs in the machine.

And I realize that I’ve been touching on the same subject in the last few of my blogs, but I wrote three in a row.  This is something I’m passionate about.

So don’t wait to live.  The time is now.  It doesn’t matter what age you are now.  Go crazy.

As a kid, I had lice like eight times in the span of three years.  It was ridiculous.

Each night was spent soaking my hair in chemicals and my father, with no sense of my pain, yanking the smallest comb you’ve ever seen in your life through my hair to pull out each speck of lice and egg, bit by bit.  It was absolute torture.

It was such a big part of my life for so long.  My things were thrown out again and again, yet somehow they kept coming back, passed among friends and passed back to me.  Half of what I owned was covered in plastic, taken off and put on again for three years, before we finally just left it on.  I was forced into isolation.

It seems stupid to talk about, but it became my entire life for quite a few years.  I began to sympathize with the lice, as I knew they were just trying to burrow into a new home…  How would you like it if your house poured chemicals on you every night?  Which is why I wrote a poem about it.

War is a frisky lover of mine,
Playful and naughty.
I hope my steady doesn’t see the scars,
But I know she will hear me scream
For my mistress amidst slumber,
Remembering how
My sweetest sprays her blood inside my mouth.
I don’t mind it too much;
In fact,
I vie for it,
Digging my hands into the human flesh,
Tearing it apart, bit by bit.
It looks so tantalizing
I just want a bite.
I can see the child I’m fighting for,
For the battle tears apart my own land.
Will he remember me tantalizing over human meat,
As it hangs in my hands?
I wonder,
For we haven’t known each other long.
He hesitantly reaches forward, but not for me.
I watch him dig into a piece of flesh.

War is not faithful to me.
She’s frivolous,
A wild spirit.
I watch as she softly kisses my enemy,
As the corrosive acid of her spit
And the enemy’s poison
Runs through my home.
War drags a lingering hand across my chest,
As she passes sultrily,
Riding the toxin like a wave.
Like a nervous fan,
Death stumbles after,
Corrosive and beastlike.

I watch as my mistress envelops my son in a tight hug,
As death scorches through his body,
Making its way past the dirt and grime,
Right to his golden heart.
I watch as parts of him,
Simply…. Fall right off.
Him, who is half of me,
As though they were just borrowed.
He looks like melted cheese,
Stretched between two hands.
I lose sight of him in the thick brush.

The enemy rears his ugly head once again,
Making the land rumble.
And in the midst of war,
I sprint forward in the chaos.
It feels as though I am falling,
Every step furthering me into an abyss;
A void in which I do not know what I am fighting for.
A comb runs through the scalp,
So thin that I cannot escape.
I am flung off.
Just a little speck of lice
On a big haired head.

I wish I was built with the extraordinary capability to save everyone, but somehow everyone keeps slipping through my fingers, right into the Eater’s mouth.

The Eater is a rather misunderstood creature.  He eats memories and feelings, but most importantly he eats away at people.  Whenever people are gone or whoever they used to be are gone or you forget something, it’s the Eater who has eaten the Gone People.

He’s this force that is constantly chasing behind you, begging at your feet like a large dog underneath the dinner table.  Eventually, he will eat something, even if he has to knock off a few plates.  Sometimes, he’ll even break the table.

I have seen him eat person after person, as they fall into his mouth like a stale french fry.  And then the person who I was grasping onto to keep from falling is gone, they’re a Gone Person, and there’s nothing underneath be to keep me from the falling, falling, and falling…

You can’t come back from the Eater.  You can become a different person and still be alive, but the person you were before is gone.  That’s a Gone Person.

He’s always there, waiting to Eat you.  Sometimes, it can be a good thing.  If you don’t like who you are, you can fall back into him like a cocoon, except with teeth and stomach acid.

The truth is that he’s lonely, and he’s misunderstood.  The Gone People keep him company.  I have many versions of myself doing so.

You can save people from him, but sometimes you aren’t Enough.  And I wish I was Enough, I wish I was bursting with such Enoughness as others do.  Trying to save people hurts.  I am hurt.  I wonder why I am not Enough.

Why am I not brimmed with it so that it topples over when I walk?  I want people to come licking up behind me, thirsty for the taste.  They’ve never seen such Enoughness before!  Amazing!

Why am I so empty, so see-through and paper-thin without the Enoughness, that people slip right through my fingertips?

Sometimes I hate the Eater.  I hate him for hurting me like this, but it’s not him.  It’s them who led themselves down this path, all the while holding my hand just so I can watch them dangle.  It’s a slippery slope down the chair legs, right into the waiting dog’s mouth.

It doesn’t matter.  I am still hurt.  They are still Gone People.

Who is the Gone Person you speak of, Zoe?  People may ask.

Why, I say.  It’s me and you and it’s everyone.  The Gone is this virus that we breath and we spit and we kiss, it’s in the cracks of your lip and the juice of eye.

We’re all Gone People.

But I forgive you, Eater.

My hands are stained last night blues.  I held the sky in the palm of my hand; did you notice?

Did you notice the sky disappear?  Maybe your roommate choked a bit in their snoring or the light from the window disappeared.

But what was I supposed to do with the sky?  I let it soak into my skin, and it hurt, and it wasn’t at all dreamy.  The clouds burned, twisting and tying my tiny little knuckle hairs together just to be mean.

So I let it go.  But as it bounded out, eager and free, I stretched with it.  All of the sudden I was the sky, blue and wide, and I thought if my mother was looking out of her window now then she’d probably tell me to start eating better.

The moon was angry I blocked his light.  He came to rest into my belly button so he could be seen, making sure to jab an elbow at me.  He was burning hot, and my skin melted as tiny droplets of rain.

The sun felt left out.  I said, wait your turn.

Why?  She asked.  The moon is constantly showing during my time; why not I during his?

I think about telling her that this is the way of the world, perhaps making it about the patriarchy.  No, I decided.

You have to want it, I say.  Find your place, it will not be given to you.  Be strong, be loud.  Shoot your rays, burn my skin, and do not apologize.

I will hurt you, she said.

Do you think yourself better than the moon because you think of me? Because you care for my pain?  Because you have not dug between the lint in my belly button?  I ask.

She hesitates.  I know her answer.

That is more selfish than any moon on any planet, I tell her.

What if I speak and no one hears me?  She asks.  What if I dig into your belly button and you swallow me whole?

Silly, I think.  I’m so tiny, just a human.  But right now I am the sky, and the sun is afraid of me.  She quakes for no reason because she fears everything bigger than she.

What if the world has no glow?  I counter.

She cautiously steps forward, and I make a spot for her in the circle of my lips.  She is so frighteningly cold..  The fog of my breath turns into clouds, lined with my spit that has become icicles.

I return to Earth.  The only evidence of the event is my blue hair, chapped lips, and a really weird belly button.

So I was thinking about running for president.  But I’ll only have one platform: Tennessee.

We should basically just quarantine Tennessee.  The only real worthwhile contribution the state has ever made that is even scraping subpar is the pick-up line.  But basically, we section it off, and then we make everything in Tennessee $10.  Absolutely everything.

Think about it.  It kind of balances out.

Houses? $10.  (But you can only have ten.)

Any sort of food? $10.

Medical operations? $10.

Price of gas per gallon? $10.

I say we quarantine it and see if it works.  And if it doesn’t work, Tennessee burns in anarchy, and we just let them go at it, you know?  Like let them set up their own government if they want to, whatever.  It will probably take them a while to figure out that the government is coming to stop anyone.

Why isn’t the government going to intervene?  Because no one can go in or out of Tennessee.  You don’t want them buying things for other than $10 or people giving them stuff or them buying things for other people.

Also, there are only 10 dollar bills.  I say that it will work better than any trickle-down economic theory.

Plus, it will be pretty neat to have a new joke for Tennessee that isn’t a pickup line.
“What kind of dollar bills do you have?”
“The only dollar bill is the ten-I-see.”

Amazing, right?  Then Tennessee isn’t completely worthless.  Granted, Mississippi is going to have to find a new “vacation spot” that isn’t basically Mississippi.  They’ll have to, I don’t know, actually go somewhere new and experience new things instead of going to Tennessee just for the sake of saying you went somewhere.

The armpit of the country will turn into a frick frack amazing social economic theory war zone.  How cool is that?

I mean, you’d have to weigh the cons and pros of living there.  Everything is only $10, but so are inexpensive things.  There’s also a lot of anarchy, which I count as a major plus.

I would volunteer Mississippi to be the guinea pig, just because it’s a terrible state, but the whole point to sectioning off Tennessee is the same.

Then again, maybe we can start making some six dollar bills for Mis-six-ippi.  At least then we’d get something other than some annoying song.

And that is why you should vote for Z Money as president.

(I would go contact my senator and tell them my amazing idea, but I think they’d steal it.)