blueberries (3) // emilie kneifel
a scribble-column about how words taste. like blurbs, sure, but bluer. by poet and critic emilie kneifel.
“how have i survived till the end credits?” “a survivor of things / that still rip my insides out.” other final girls — laurie strode (halloween), sidney prescott (scream), erin harson (you’re next), “almost always a thin /white girl” — each meet her for drinks. how sidney gets up in the morning: “she just does.” at the bar, erin says, “surviving is continual,” and her words repeat as the surviving does. whiskey coffee spike. “already dead / inside,”all four meet for dinner, “order top shelf whiskey” and tell each other what they covered “in dirt until it comes back up for air.” final girls “slip away often.” but here, they pile. they listen “without interrupting me whatsoever.”
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“so many things are sickening,” “ass cheeks aching,” violence thrumming. “even the wind is out of breath.” “face tired eye tired.” “prayer evades me.” so much still reaches her. “those seconds that i first raise the orange paper up to my face.” “a newborn, opening its unseeing eyes.” her grandfather’s hands, “tears as opaque as pearls,” “the shapes [...]not the words.” “i memorize it all / to bring safety to that feeling again.”
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“bone shrapnel caught/ in a bib,” tooth struck and gnashing. dad “boiled his instruments,” pulled. metal pliers, metal teeth.in her only dream of her brother, he tapped her shoulder and “all my teeth / fell out.” when she says she “lost // a tooth,” “lost” is a fleck lost alone on the page. “d / a / n / g / l / e” sways ragged, scattered like something spit out.“blender hums.” a mouth “wired shut.” a novocaine promise: “you’re going to feel some pressure / but no pain / none at all.”
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“blueberries” features books by marginalized canadian authors, with a special focus on chapbooks. do you have a chapbook? a chapstick? a blue berry? email queries (and berries) to [email protected].
emilie kneifel is a poet/critic, editor at The Puritan/Theta Wave, creator of CATCH/PLAYD8s, and also a list. find 'em at emiliekneifel.com, @emiliekneifel, and in Tiohtiá:ke, hopping and hoping
