BEAUTIFULLY MUTILATED, INSTANTLY ANTIQUATED
by Alex Dally MacFarlane
Needle into skinthread-heavy at its rear --
silver, pain, a drop of red:
beauty sewn at soft-fleshed wrist.
Gold candle-holder, small. £82
She turns her wrist to the shadows; gold glints,
curves of metal against her clove-dark skin,
held close with transparent plastic thread
looped through loops in the edges of the metal. It hurt,
once. No longer. Flesh healed, and held the plastic inside.
"Illuminate," she whispers. Fire,
fire a-flicker on the wick, hot and bright.
Wax runs over her wrist, and she holds it aloft,
bearing the candle and its thread-fastened holder
to banish the dark.
Needle into skin
thread-heavy at its rear --
silver, pain, a drop of red:
beauty sewn across her back.
Tapestry, moth-eaten in parts. £17
Among stained glass windows in frames,
among cabinets and hat stands with little metal feet
it hung. It caught her glance.
Houses and trees and patchwork fields
and a river through their centre like a spine:
faded and frayed, spotted with holes
and though it would cover her back
she bought it. With faint threads
she repaired the gaps and edges
into her skin.
Needle into skin
thread-heavy at its rear --
silver, pain, a drop of red:
beauty sewn at her shoulders.
Necklace with amber drop. £40
Tarnished silver locket. £7
Carefully, one-handed, she pulls off her apron
and drops it on the varnished oak floor.
She prefers her body this way: un-covered,
open like a museum's doors. Welcoming,
arch-steady, her shoulders are bright in the candle-light:
on the right, a locket; on the left, amber.
Each a cabinet of history,
of a painted daughter and a black-winged insect
long dead. But she remembers them
when no one else has. Smiling at the past,
she crouches and opens her box of tools.
Needle into skin
thread-heavy at its rear --
silver, pain, a drop of red:
beauty sewn on every toe.
10 wooden chairs, 1/124th scale. £33
A Thracian greave at each shin,
a map, minutely detailed, above her knee,
a gold ring at her clitoris --
on her crowded skin, between histories and curiosities
she managed to find a home for ten chairs.
She saw them, arranged large to small
as if against one side of an invisible table
and knew she must have them.
They fit one to a toe.
No one sits at them. That saddens her,
a little. Can butterflies not see a place to pause,
or spiders a place to weave a home?
Not yet, not yet.
Needle into skin
thread-heavy at its rear --
silver, pain, a drop of red:
beauty sewn into soft stomach.
Victorian copy of Isidore's Etymologiae. £375
The needle and thread are like old lovers
pressing into her body, and she is on her back
for them. She keeps her candle upright
and her stitching hand steady.
This is her last.
She is full, a museum's display case
that cannot comfortably fit more, not even a tile,
except for this: illuminated and gold-edged,
a bestiary that fits her so neatly,
its back cover to her bare stomach.
She is complete. And she is ready
to walk among the curious
and let them touch the past.
Alex Dally MacFarlane listens to too much DeVotchKa and watches odd music videos on youtube; then she writes. One of her poems received an honourable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. Her poetry has been published (or soon will be) in Goblin Fruit, Sybil's Garage, Jabberwocky 4 and The Pedestal Magazine, and her short fiction in Clarkesworld, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede and several other zines. Not long ago she quit her job to wander parts of the world. She keeps a journal here.
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