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the archive(s):
issue no. 4:
Brauner's Muse/ Nathan Leslie
Figure 19
I am a diamond. Apparently a diamond. Perhaps a cubic crystal within another crystal. Perhaps a three-dimensional scrawled star, the kind you make on your binder in second grade. Background fog. Rounded corners. Like an antique playing card.
Figure 20
I am still a diamond (or crystal or star). But now I am within an egg or an oval. Perhaps I'm an eyeball. Some fog, though lighter. The egg is dark, clouding my vision. The fog is lifting. Something is about to happen.
Figure 21
The egg is not an egg or an oval. The egg is a widening sun. Yet, I am not within the sun. Instead, I dangle in front of the sun, where the nose should be. The sun looks cross-eyed. Eyes on the side of its face where the ears should be. Mouth full, as if smeared with lipstick, as if I'm a tropical fish. They may be wrinkles. The rays are quill paints, round until the tip. I don't understand what he's doing. More important: why is he subjecting me to this?
Figure 22
Complete torture. He has turned me into a rooster with a giant fish standing upright, with a dog head, with a man's face sideways and a sun on my forehead. My arms come from the fish head. I am holding mobiles. Musical notes and mobile parts abound. Sixty-six. My feet seem too thin to support the weight. My rooster tale is decorated with pebble holes. Questions abound.
Figure 23
He must be trying to oppress me. This is some sort of mental test. I am a hand with a face. My finger-hair stands on end-thumb, pinkie, middle finger. It is all very obvious. A wheel sun is behind me. A telephone moon is too. I strangle a chicken and squirt milk upon it with my pendulous breasts (at least I am a woman again). In my left hand I hold a snake by the tail and squirt milk into its mouth. My breasts have mobile designs and arrows engraved upon them. I have a mustache number eight. I wear a skirt with pebble-holes and stripes. Trapezoid shoes. He doesn't seem to appreciate me. Otherwise, why would he make me so misshapen?
Figure 24
I am not sure why I deserve this. My breasts are horns. They emerge from my head. My milk fountain holds up a canoe of hair. I get a cliff of hair myself. Egyptian face and pose (at least I appear to be a person). Yet my body is a triangle, and the sun only flower petals on my middle. Still with the pebble holes. But now it's high heels and a link of beads decorating around the perimeter of the triangle. He's tossing me a bone. Yet, he cares for me so little.
Figure 25
Older and wiser perhaps. More appreciative perhaps. I am granted color-purple, orange, green, blue, yellow. Yet, I am reverting back to sub-animal form. At least there is color. And human hands. I hold a mirror or a hammer, so even if my hands shoot from my extended beak, at least I'm doing. My mouth is a U. My lips are leaves. My eye is the sun. Yet I do have glorious purple, scaled talons. I do have a perfect yellow canary body. This is something. Something to build on. Flip the pages and see the transformation.
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