Aeon Ginsberg

Springtime as Judith

In spring apology blooms a 
painted nipple / say, no matter 
the shirt there will be a focal 
point / art history has taught 
me to focus an eye to denote 
importance / say you do not 
see the nipple except in the 
paintings of supplicant women 
and so / in the gallery no one 
expects the nipples to be roses 
as they blossom from the 
beheading of Holofernes / red 
for roses / for blood / for 
violence / a body is a sharp 
thing / at springtime a nipple 
births itself beneath a layered 
body / say focal point / guide 
the eyes / a man staring at the 
peony’s only to see the poison 
/ yes the man is always 
Holofernes / yes Judith was 
trans / too and oh how our 
nipples puff the same way

On the first day of spring a man who I called babydoll at work refuses to consider my presence tangible / passes through me a barn door / winter-wind / insulation leak / a child ripping the flowers out the ground with their mouth / in the painting Judith /recoils her face from the blood / is wearing white / wet t-shirt contest / mouth closed and Holofernes lies / open maw / tongue out / trying even in death to bare fangs

Angel Olsen Says Every Artist Should Title A Piece unfucktheworld

And in the news story a deer is seen 
with their mouth around a human carcass 
and who set up cameras around a dying body 
only to film the deer instead, but in the same week 
a new service emerges that will mail your ashes 
to a congress person after you die.

The joke is, you will not outlive an old politician, 
one who will wear your humanity in their mouth, 
and in this way they are all humans in deer fur. 
They crowd around my body and gnaw the skin 
away, as the world watches and conjures write up.

There is a deer with bones in their mouth—even they know 
that the marrow is the delicacy—and the joke is everyone 
is preoccupied that a politician is on all fours using 
a demitasse spoon to funnel the marrow down their throat 
and maybe that is what healthcare is supposed to be. 
Living long enough to be consumed.

Caring for another’s health so much that you own them. 
There is a news article about Chechnya again and the 
ways that the rounded up queer youth are condemned 
to death by their parents, how there is no care for their health 
now that their health is against their government. 
And is that what it means to be queer? To be human and queer 
is to be found in a forest, eaten by animals on all fours.

And I say I enjoy my job because they give me insurance and 
the seventy hour pay checks seem more compassionate 
in that way. The more I live the less likely 
I will be able to control when or why I have died, and 
it’s May Day and I am working again, thinking of Louis Lingg 
and how the night before his execution he committed suicide.

The anarchist slid a blasting cap into prison and detonated it 
in his mouth and I wonder what would I feel if in Chechnya 
and condemned to death? There are reports that families 
are contacted to execute their queer children but we keep 
deleting our family members from facebook, so who would bring

the bullets to send me into a forest for deer to consume my bones? 
Or maybe that is healthcare? Like Lingg I will die in agony regardless 
of the paths in which my life takes, and so why not go to the politicians 
as they stand in a circle, in the forest, and light an explosive in my mouth. 
Only half of Lingg’s face was detonated, and he lived for six hours more,

so I imagine I would too, before my bones become a consumable thing, 
and want to imagine Louis Lingg was able to cry 
from his remaining tear duct.

Wonder if the politicians would call my family, 
weeping, for they were unable to find my body 
living enough to murder it

and what a shame that is, what a shame.