I
This game is a machine involving bowling balls, sipping
birds, boots, babies, bullets, pulleys, and rope.
Begin at the beginning. Measure the natural waist
with tape and a wandering eye. Correct with strings
pulled tight, tug with a foot in the back, make the ratio
deep. Fingers should meet. This game is a machine
involving spandex, stretch, smoothing machination
designed to counter-weight personality, to sip
politely in public, to slip one past calculation
of worth. Numbers matter as much as how much rope
one needs to hang. Measuring tape as noose strung.
This game is a machine involving verbs: to bind. To gird.
Shush of strings laced, waist to hip, waist to bust ratio
slip […] rope smokes. The trick is a boot to the head.
II
Hold her down. It’s better if she can’t breathe, a waste
of breath. When she faints, waspish, the device
is a couch with a low back. Trigger ligaments.
Her knees will bend, conscious or […] slippage.
Push. Shove. Wrists together and knotted rope,
hoist. This game is a machine involving display, reckoning
salience. Of the feminine. Reckoning
an hourglass, easily turned, manipulated middle.
Hurry up, please. It’s time she’s waking up, and rope
leaves a mark. If she thinks it’s a trick
of her mind. If she thinks she can’t remember [slip]
It’s better. It’s what she gets for […] threads
strung together. Loose. Wasted. Calculate
the number drunk. Insert into machine. Just enough rope.
III
This game is a machine involving knotted strings,
apron and otherwise, and insertion means the ratio
of consent to obligation, degradation, violation slips.
Just lay there. Think of anything else, babies, how waste
products of trees keep you alive, how machines
think. Not how the actual fuck did you get roped
into this. Not how did you swallow the idea of ties
as love, of what it means that man-on-top twists
into missionary, less beast-with-two-backs and more robot,
more hurry up and get it over with, more what is the ratio
of orgasms to daydreams, more […] wonder what your waist
looks like from behind in reverse cowgirl [slip]
and would you have a lasso [slip] braided strings
at your waist […] [Slip] this bit. Into your rebel mouth.
Image by: Gabrielle Brant Freeman