Rupture
Blake Butler


We'd went through the bruise house lighting candles, hiding fire, licking bone. We'd could not had found the year gun or the butter. There was all this murmur matter hammered in the sink beneath sink, the way I had in every evenings in the light, pressed flat against the wall there of my father and his wall as well, the wall behind his room where he had made me with the women and the burnlight and the ream, where in the flat hull masked up from those rooms I'd had learned to learn a word, one word for what my coming years were, what would all come in and out of me. I'd hid there wrapped up in me until in my meat the word could not be held, until in the rhythm in the lit light in the house there the word had burst out of me aloud, spoken once there in the wet room with my father in his wish, his eyes crossed in the stunning. The word had shook the room. In the shaking, through the ceiling, the rod had come into the house. The rod dislodged from somewhere aimed above us always, through and through and down and down. The rod had struck the cat down in its insert, pilling the carpet around it in a guzz, the orgasmed cat had crying out there where it had tried hard in the way it wanted more and more. Please disregard please in your own house the sound forever also, where would if you'd had put your head against it rightly you'd would also would explode. In the house as when the rod went through the cat the cat had gived off in the house out of its ears and ass, the cat erupted in clean colors, loaming, the words I'd hid hung from my other in her rashy rashing racks of meat and swim and saw, the itch of which there where in splitter and with white hot heat-want hit hard in mass against my chest, my flat chest where the milk had hadn't and where still in the nights I felt the mouths. There with the splash gush of the cat meat through her hot holes came into the air against my lungs: the rupture with would kissed the roll of ocean in me, light and water, which where in white nights after I could will lean myself against myself and hear me there, though when I hear me in this hearing, I so much can not hear again so long. As did the rod come into the house there in the house there my father did not blink. At first the rod, the brunt of tremor, my father, my father's name I can not name now, though it is the same name as my name is when I've said it, I will not say it is how it is now, not for none there in this ignition, do not ask. My father, he'd had, he'd called it coming, he'd said he'd seen it on its way for days, such stink; he'd had stood aimed with one arm weeks straight through the roof there where in the warm day there the rod at once had cut; the other arm aimed at my head directly, wherever I would move, unless would I would move against him, there then the arms together would hold words too. My father in the room there where the rod had had had truly to him come through and touched the house there, bursting, the rod sawed straight through my father's leg. My father bleeding from his leg meat running, sunning open, did not blink. He put his fork down there against him where from where he'd been digging through the other cat's black fat, a twin, for fleas that we would eat. In the room new around the rod my father watched his leg jump in his ejection warm of sputum hid, where he'd had hid ideas inside as well and also, in his leg there pilling inward and on against itself for years, for all those years there coming off, spooling in color blather axis like a spitter feed set for a seedbed where would the future stoning forest across our lawn and home and graves would soon be seated, the same sac'd seed from what he'd made me and from where when in the night I walked in skeins of light. My father, skinless, soring, watched his inner matter come cracked and spin up off into the hue in pigeoned curls, up not as a fountain or percussion but as the kind of wet that comes from need, the kind of need that comes from have had having had hid and me too in ways through walls wake in the no night. Where in the room there, by my father, from his new hole came the blood plumed, encoiling on the air meat, folding up and out in tines, calling the other air and ashing hours, the cells of cells of our upright, calming the house around the rod as well the plume swelled and wrapped around my father's head, my father named after my father, and father's father, named after me, the halves of me hid in my owning, who for who which also I am named, the blood plume coiling in behind him to wrap the father in one lidless touchless shroud, a shroud so dense I could had could not fit my hands in, could I could not find the door. Though there the rod did not destroy me though there I watched my father fry. Where the rod touched me, its swelling, I found that I could move. I found that I could be the father, the him inside him, the me inside the him inside him, the weight of all of my unbrothered brothers, the wick of locks, the halves, the ladder. The black rod swoll there in the house there and me against it and me in rub where I could rub, where would I could put it in me in the saying silence and hear the locks at once all come unclicked.




Blake Butler's Ever, from Calamari Press, has just been released.

Detail of photo on main page courtesy of morena 7.







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