(i)
even as a murderess she held a certain nobility -
never brought a gun to a swordfight,
never shied from loudly announcing herself
a knock
a streak of yellow
never accepted she shouldn't be bestowed something priceless.
and so i believe there is a Beatrix Kiddo
whose killer maternal instinct could reconcile the fact
that everyone is someone's child.
but that nature requires a nurture
where there are no triggers pulled tense against their springs at a church service,
no old men curling baby hairs behind ears as
some unbreakable vow
some staked claim
no learning lovers can destroy one another with the press of a few fingertips.
there will still be unresolved injustices - it is the world, after all.
but if Beatrix Kiddo is to be more merciful
so too must her circumstances.
(ii)
even under softer stimuli,
when she's activated?
i still imagine the room fades on the periphery.
she strides into some third-world streetside dive, whipcracks echoing off her heels,
nears the throat of the lead she's chasing and draws her Hattori Hanzo -
a finely tuned, custom-crafted, Japanese steel
pen.
her adapted method of exposing what she knows to be the truth
slicing fearlessly through the silence
direct eye contact
directer questions
digging up all they've buried
pressing the barrel so hard the ink bleeds onto the next sheet.
the result - a venomous, front-page skewering;
she's found a way of dismantling someone with her fingertips in this timeline too.
Beatrix Kiddo reformed
will not roar or rampage her way to revenge,
no.
she will be precise,
she'll exact it.
Tag: quote
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revive The Bride.
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to think Jesus flipped tables.
it wasn’t the surety of the rising seas
nor the screams of mowed classrooms
so it sure as Hell won’t be the sHelling of the land we collectively call Holyno
somehow
we, top-of-the-food-chain
we, super-predator
we, brains deeply outsized to bodymass – seven times more than would be linearly predicted –
we still have further to push into the deepest homegrown pits Dante never imagined,
still have further to fall from biological grace than this.endearing the way we let lions keep ‘king of the jungle’;
patronizing almost, with a brain-to-majestic-mane-and-fierce-teeth-and-flicking-tail ratio of 1:550.
did you know when lions feel their territory threatened by another pride,
they’ll try to kill their young?
crazy. the wild takes no prisoners dude.
US either
we just use the adult size bags to keep it simple
fits every bodyto think
we sit here
and watch children die on our handheld 6.1′ OLED displays
picket in support of every mattress having a gun shoved between the box spring
time countdowns to the permanence of each centimeter of oceanwater
to think
2,000 years and a stone’s throw from here
Jesus flipped tables because capitalism had set up a few booths in His Temple
and of the many things He may have known for certain
the snowballing of men’s sins was one of them.
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weatherman.
i remember the air was balmy before we knew him. desperate for a breeze we'd throw open every window - dance, sweaty and barefoot, on an oak floor decades our senior. something powerful and ancient came screaming out when we gathered: chanting songs that reminded us of being young (chart toppers from three summers ago) throwing our arms up, out, around each other (the joy was too big to hold on our own) innocence sloshing rhythmically 'round the rims of our cups (three girlish grins colluding with six batting eyelashes to escape the consequence of some small town barkeep; "my sir, i've no idea! that pink lemonade really got mixed up with the wrong crowd!") it was so hard to notice at first - you, adultily checking the weather each day, to help decide whether it'd be cold without a jacket, when to leave to beat the rain. the world spun slowly on an axis of frilly distractions: for us - a creaky maple porch swing and worn dive bar jukeboxes and whirling around the front lawn with boys, for you - the weatherman, who had you lagging behind to apply sunscreen, to fiddle with your thermostat until it was just right. as the air cooled around us, between us, the checks kept piling up. bit by bit, you transformed beneath his radar. whether to wear that outfit, what activities would be appropriate to do; the whetherman guided your when, your what, your wear. snow fell. you bundled up. our toes froze stubbornly in high heels. it grew so bad near Christmas we tore up the floorboards, "to keep it warm in here" he said. each taking shifts to silently stoke the open flames, our planks of red oak burning to a bright cherry, a blackened mahogany, ash. dawn broke. you stood to fill the glasses, a muscle-memory intimacy interrupted by a brow furrow - our lemonade was suddenly plain. the last stubborn embers crackled television static through the stillness. i looked up at the funeral pyre in the middle of our living room and suddenly understood the term "meteorologist." he'd collided into the group of us and blown everything recognizable to pieces.
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musée 