BATTLEFIELDS
by Stacy Stiles
They tell me that I wear battles
embedded beneath my skin
That I nosed hell and it singed
my skin black
They tell me that my face
tells tragedies
And that my smile quivers
with screams
When I look at my reflection
I see a face faded to bone
A bitter, discarded woman
Draped with long, dirty memories
When I stride onto the battlefield
Cape flaring red around me
A shivering curtain drenched with blood
My children lie sleeping and quiet against me
A living armor of tentacles and viscera
Shh, I tell them, coax her in
And their quiet wings flutter around me
As erotic as harmony twisted
As soft and sweet as a final breath
She--that woman--
She is my opposite
On the day of my birth
I opened my eyes
and knew her as a shining thing
Her eyes glowed wonder warm
sparking with a sheen of pure mischief
She smiled at me then
Those delicate lips tinged with riddles
curling up at the edges
She placed her hands on my cheeks
and said, "Welcome, daughter."
Now she comes to me
wearing the aspirations of her people
against her skin
they quiver and quake
each tiny droplet suspended in the air
Waiting to be chosen
Waiting to fall
Her magic frolics across the field of stars
Lifting and twisting her soft-tussled hair
My, that wondering and suspicious defiance
She raises her arms to me,
A call back home
But where her body pleads her eyes lie empty
"Come now," I say
"Embraces work only if kind."
She turns, then
Her resigned eyes meet those of her consort
Clothed in his mantle of foliage
despairing dahlias, wilting wisteria, tragic tulips
His very skin declaring a funeral for the living
His eyes scream at her
Uneasy feelings clenched tight in that shaded chest
And under it all the sharp-collar jealousy
That unquenchable thirst for battle
Even earth gods have myths of blood
When her eyes meet mine again
I know the time is come
Fury reflects fury reflects fury
The sky scorches between us
"Why?" she asks
Like darkness asked this can even breathe
"You know why." I answer
and so it begins.
At first our fight is gentle
The tendrils of our power
twining and clashing uncomfortably
Light shrinking from dark
Dark shrinking from light
We both cast shadows
in this eerie braided wonder
It feels like the universe around us whirls
filled with overcome worlds and deafened landscapes
A delicate dance outlined in the silhouettes
of two outstretched women
Until suddenly we are no longer so gentle
She attacks me with a threaded precision
The heat of her power sizzling my fingernails
Stripping the skin from my face
She is an inferno
She bathes in that impossible fire
and laughs
and laughs
It hurts me, that laugh
I call my children to life
They rise from my skin
and fall upon her like a carrion wish
Desperate, hungry, and unforgiving
She writhes under them
No longer laughing
And then no longer screaming
My children flutter back to me
Glutted on her power
And stripped naked, she falls
Her eyes linger on me
Wide and knowledge-numb
Flawless to the end
I spread my arms and smile
Ever her amused creation
I won't bow to her
Despite the murmurings in my chest
Spreading with every shallow breath
That tell me that even her death
Does not bring me peace
Around us, our dance shivers
its way into silence
Her consort still stands on the edge of our battlefield
He is wrecked and broken
A half that is now a whole
the undefinable sound of his cry--like stubbornness
lies heavy in the air
And as I take you, tucked and broken, into my arms
I can only look at your face
Every pore filled with wishes, dreams, and hidden things
I murdered a wonder.
How to Read
Battlefields is an amalgamation of both my past works and my current writing, rendered by the digital tool called the Cut Up Machine. Combining my poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in a variety of cut ups, I sifted through the gibberish and pulled the phrases and sentences that stuck in my mind. What felt like a narrative began to form out of these disparate pieces, and as I followed them Battlefields began to take shape. During this process, it truly felt like my works were leading me forward; writing Battlefields felt both spontaneous and guided. While Battlefields should be appreciated purely as a poem, it can also be appreciated as a collaborative work. As such, all my pieces used to create Battlefields are linked below, as well as a page which shows both the cut ups used and which combination they sprang from.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Cut Up Machine Sources:
- Nonfiction
- THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN
- Hirai Taro: Master of Mystification
- Fiction
- The Sparrow
- The Singing Girl
- Poetry
- Growing Up
- Remembrance
- Cut Ups and Combinations