STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
BRIAN CLIFTON
—after Roger Reeves
Not this nail, bored idol of the crossroads
gilded in a gold coffin. When I was dangerous
wearing the dusk like a luxurious trench coat,
no mallet crashed to skull like a cymbal to start
a crescendo. My tongue erased itself with lips.
The forever breaking skin pulled taut my mouth’s
sack of nerves and murderous molars, cheeks
surrendered to bruxism, the embarrassed desire
to do anything but confess when I was dangerous,
which is the defanged chewing I have been
looking for—something that will linger inside
and rattle and eat through the body, the memory,
the blood. Nail how you emerged in the image
of your creator, how heavily you traveled through
hands. How often I misnamed the violence of dusk.
I pulled the ankles of my brother to topple him—
nail through his lips, the blood streaming over
his teeth, some he spat out, some he choked back
and swallowed, forever waiting to come up again.
Because when microscopic, one alone will not work
as you and I imagine,
we need a myriad, a number.
That said, many wonder if the tiny brain is meant to be handled
in large groups or if they are—in the wild—solitary. Studies show the brain,
if tiny, will grow restless when gathered. They rub against one another
until overcome by a red mist
or the atomic-lightning-storm of rapture.
Last week, I confessed in a parking lot I haven’t always been
the best friend to have. A common line, I know. And common sense
tells us an isolated tiny brain will develop
its own language, further separating it
from the herd. So when it tries to say—telepathically—
to another that they are alive and that’s all
you could hope for, it thinks in orca-song—ringing echoes and clicks.
No other tiny brain understands when it radiates from its nanocortex,
I love you, tiny brain. No one reaches out to embrace. Rupture and rapture
shake hands in the mind. In the parking lot, in a time of lightning,
you, me, the infinite folds of the large brain in the sky.
Truth is some tiny brains studied orca in college and even did a semester abroad
in the ocean. They spend their days retelling their tiny-brained neighbors
about the time they met a native orca speaker—
how their culture is full of love
and philosophy!—the everlasting impact of this experience.
Afterward, I walk home, heavier, less determined. I stay up watching bodies
rub their faces clean off. Poor tiny brain, my tiny brain mumbles,
stuck in its cylindrical holding tank,
which is filled with some sort of salty solution.
Brian Clifton is the author of the chapbooks MOT and Agape (from Osmanthus Press). They have work in: Pleiades, Guernica, Cincinnati Review, Salt Hill, Colorado Review, The Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and other magazines. They are an avid record collector and curator of curiosities.
