BY KAILEY TEDESCO
the dreamhaus / the diabolical haunting
so sloppy in my overgrown
housecoat, i sleep with fingers
blooming from my spell-slit,
a garland of opal & nail
polish, entire hands withering
the circumference
of my mouth. there is no room
for any eating. my new husband
looks to be made of fur, no
shirt or socks to conceal
the hairs pinning him to bed,
a gulliver. my new husband tells
me if i go first he’ll most miss
my hands tucked beneath his waistband
not for sex, but warmth. he threads
me through him for grief beads, self
to self & ashes to ashes, all of it
moistened softly like shortbread
to milk. our demons curdle
in the stretch marks i’ll wake
to, seemingly inexplicable. i scrub
them from me in the clawfoot, line
my legs in blacksalt, try to cover
every bruise of mirror. i’m rubescent
in the steam of it, a sopping
lantern flame. still by noon “oh” faces
return to lavender my hydration, make
my weeping violet as the windows well
with sun, puffy with sobbing.
my new husband finds me
in this decaying state, mortars my fingers
through his own. we become each other’s
asthma, a growth of lamb & cotton, suck
each other’s fevers, nursing
this new self for keepsake. we vow
to leave this earth together
or else never,
not at all.
paradise trail / the road to penn hills
the hedge maze has astral projected
me into being — i leak
through my pants, blood
threading into baroque,
shaped like magic. i want
my rabbits back,
the ones i’d lost long ago
to runtdom. the mother, my most
beloved, ate
her smallest child.
he was the first
to leave us.
then the screams came
& then the ghosts. their teeth
on me like sawdust. their teeth
stuck in my left eye; a blocking,
a power. my eyes both speak
garden & the arm
of the doll, porcelain, operates
my eye bags violet
from the inside switch-
board. a friend who believes in it
tells me about the bible
& how it wasn’t the people
losing their flesh to leprosy,
but their houses: leviticus. the whole
neighborhood & its dead
malls psoriasis the weather,
wounds roaching
on the walls enough to make the bunnies
nervous. untethered deep
in my shrine, i everlasting faint
through the chaises of the inn
during the year just before the year
we came to realize
no one is alone
in their dreams of losing
all their teeth. i craft myself
in sequins & glue-thimbles on my
fingertips. i must start my sewing
project; the heart-
carpets need what little
red i have left to offer.
vestibular
above the house i live in & within the attic an audience; a murder
red-threads the sky dark every day at a time called violet. i saw others
at the foot of my bed slinked down from the pull-string; paralysis
has kept me youth-looped; never aging never dying
& yet i come to find new whispers dizzying my ears. there is a haunting
in the grand hallway of me; my eustachian tube gleaming godwards towards
the attic; my gown lake-clung with blood & brooch on the floor
in a courtship never asked for. i get dizzier with it, ear-pop
& in the lick of time; the meat of me poultices a soul
i’ve now come to believe in gut-brined & slopped up.
for the years that i sleep my dreaming homes me; my crawl. flower girls
walk the aisles of my larynx, petals tinsel my gum line. once upon a time,
thinking me dead finally, my second-self kissed my arm up & down
for valentine’s. i came to; sightless for the moment & for the moment
seeing; i am the luckiest girl living inside my own insides curtseying
lupercalia. this soul i now believe in makes my edges sprout
lace; it pains. the crowd has come to from the attic,
from my leaking aural migraines; my brain awakens as my body
doesn’t; we interlock at the fingers, my double-vision resurrects.
Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing) & Lizzie, Speak (White Stag Publishing). Her newest collection, FOREVERHAUS, will be available soon. She is a senior editor for Luna Luna Magazine, and she teaches at Moravian College. For more, follow @kaileytedesco.