Faye Chevalier: You Get Revived, You Pay Rent

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

you get revived, you pay rent

after “Sharp Teeth / Soft Hold” by Melody Nielson

my fingers as mounds of asps,

an entire hand down my throat—

the ruin as tombstone;

a body, venerating

the life & death

of a body,

as much remembrance-machine

as earth-holder, a signifier-death—

we cleaned the house today,

leaving the snakeskin on the floor,

a mediation of a queer theory of decay,

foreign smells, & a gag reflex for days—

my body is made

of a lot of little bodies,

of dead things

of silence—

the “Which Angel Are You?” Buzzfeed quiz of living

kill me on Groove Night      

then block me on twitter,

spend the morning      

-after backpedaling;

i can never tell      

when i am the object

of violence,

so bested by

the forthcoming

so fragile in the rain;

& when you cut off

the head of a rat king

it will j grow

a new rat king

from said severed head

we know this bc of

the many rat king corpses

that go missing, the cold act of

flesh begetting white noise,

not-needing in the rain,

or rather,

not-needed by the rain

i don’t think i want to ruin my own life anymore

this here, is a “kill”;

lanes of pity for the birds

clawing out my human throat;

my sorry scent of fractured stems;

acts of glazy sonnet-ing

piling over them purchased

still-living

remains

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Faye Chevalier is a Philadelphia-based poet and essayist. She is the author of the chapbook, future.txt (Empty Set Press 2018), and her work has been featured in The Wanderer, Peach Mag, Witch Craft Magazine, the tiny, and elsewhere. Some of her awards and recognitions include being the first ever poet to have work published on a cyberpunk tabletop rpg podcast (Neoscum 2018) and also a Pushcart nomination. Find her on Twitter where she cries about cyborgs, vampires, and having a body at @bratcore.