Mujer
Lynette Muniz
Mujer
Geographic Anatomy
Kael K. Martin
It feels like this: my body is held together broken, hanging off the edges of regularity. But I have no body---my soul floats through the rooms, my perceived lack of morality the true anatomical skin. My bones are wire-wrapped, perfectly gifted; I will never quite reach the status of individualism. There is so much inside of me & yet it remains difficult to decompose, to swipe and claw at the stitched metaphors keeping me whole and unravel my essence. My body mosaic. My body unsheathed. My body taken apart in an anatomical theatre:
CRANIAL; the skull;
A thunderstorm. A small boat, sailing its way through the furies of the sky. Watch it fold in on itself, an unending spiral of a click; anguish & trauma & the throes of sea — click — an unworldly concept of purity, nested in the systems of mind. Purity can never be switched on - my soul a binary machine, she looks after herself, they whisper, she is tormented. There is no space for purity in my surrounding galactic matter; a sick, sick exile.
But I ask myself this: who wants purity, for any purpose other than to consume it and ascend into something higher, ichors united? I pull out all of my teeth one by one and I push them down into the clay mold of purity. I used to have the ability to hold things in my arms, rebirth and golden potential, but now all I have is a pile of square-sharp fangs and a stomach so full of holiness that it forces me to vomit out agony. I make something of my agony, something new. Something that I want to be. Something that, one day, I will become.
The truth of the cranial cavity: there is no way out, no secret rooms behind bookshelves, no beautiful earth-tale princes that will free me from the tower of my thoughts. I would not understand life without its wounds, we know; they are healthy, they keep your mind sharp. Rest = risk. Rest = the skull, the cranial cavity, leaking knowledge into the ground. Amen. Inside of my consciousness there is only more consciousness, layers and layers.
ORBITAL; of the eyes;
I see things that others cannot detect. I can see the truth, rotating around to the occipital: the universe is brutal and the universe is covered in a thick sheet of ice, of metal, of an unbreakable roughness that I cannot ever wash from my hands. The universe lives inside of my iris. There are so many stories to tell that involve eyes and none of them involve living, none of them involve
taking deep breaths and burying a finger in the meat of virtue’s heart. Get benevolence underneath your fingernails -- that part comes later, we’ll get to it. See: thoracic.
The whole entire universe lives inside of my right eye. It can be burdensome. In my left eye: everything that could be, all possibilities into a single fluid future. Sometimes in these realities I am whole, sometimes I am dead, and other times I have enough freedom and awareness to reach up and out for safety.
None of these realities make it into the truth. Nobody else will orbit around me. I keep myself safe, I thicken my own skin into hard husks because I am alone here. Orbit, orbit, orbital, of the eyes, my vision circling around any possible prey and pouring into the windows of their being. I used to be the prey; now I am prey wearing the predator’s corpse. Ashen renewal.
VERTEBRAL; spinal.
It asks me this question: What are you fighting for? What are you truly fighting for? I am fighting for myself. I am fighting
myself.
The axial is the core of the body; from the spine everything flows. The difference, however, being the extension of my body - my limbs, my all, every fragile bone - and the lack of quality within it. So this reimposes the question: what am I fighting for?
You could say quality, if you wanted to represent me as something that is capable of attaining it. A being, with its gold hidden. You could also say redemption, but again: its existence is hinged.
The truth, of course, is that I am fighting for nothing; I find only spaces of void. I’m just fighting.
THORACIC; of the chest; contains the heart; lungs.
Here is where it all ends: crossed out, ripped out. There is a big, dark X painted invisibly over my thoracic cavity - this is the spot where it all goes down, the big battle with the shiny new weapons, the casting-out of those no longer holy, the dissection of the body, the spreading of disease. My body is an ocean and it moves like an ocean - unpredictable, raging and furious and timid and serene. Beneath my skin - unspeakable horrors. I can pass anatomically as human but I have ascended humanity.
The heart pumps life through the body. The action potential: my movement is unstoppable and constant, my muscles contract and move and I cannot stop myself from wanting - feeling - needing - wanting - flying through survival. I want the luxury of the ability to just be. To exist in harmony with my constantly changing surroundings, an evolved homeostasis - and survival is one body of water, living is the next. When you pick up a stone and fling it into pools of blood, it does not ripple. It doesn’t skip. There isn’t any movement at all.
CRANIAL; the skull;
A thunderstorm. A small boat, sailing its way through the furies of the sky. Watch it fold in on itself, an unending spiral of a click; anguish & trauma & the throes of sea — click — an unworldly concept of purity, nested in the systems of mind. Purity can never be switched on - my soul a binary machine, she looks after herself, they whisper, she is tormented. There is no space for purity in my surrounding galactic matter; a sick, sick exile.
But I ask myself this: who wants purity, for any purpose other than to consume it and ascend into something higher, ichors united? I pull out all of my teeth one by one and I push them down into the clay mold of purity. I used to have the ability to hold things in my arms, rebirth and golden potential, but now all I have is a pile of square-sharp fangs and a stomach so full of holiness that it forces me to vomit out agony. I make something of my agony, something new. Something that I want to be. Something that, one day, I will become.
The truth of the cranial cavity: there is no way out, no secret rooms behind bookshelves, no beautiful earth-tale princes that will free me from the tower of my thoughts. I would not understand life without its wounds, we know; they are healthy, they keep your mind sharp. Rest = risk. Rest = the skull, the cranial cavity, leaking knowledge into the ground. Amen. Inside of my consciousness there is only more consciousness, layers and layers.
ORBITAL; of the eyes;
I see things that others cannot detect. I can see the truth, rotating around to the occipital: the universe is brutal and the universe is covered in a thick sheet of ice, of metal, of an unbreakable roughness that I cannot ever wash from my hands. The universe lives inside of my iris. There are so many stories to tell that involve eyes and none of them involve living, none of them involve
taking deep breaths and burying a finger in the meat of virtue’s heart. Get benevolence underneath your fingernails -- that part comes later, we’ll get to it. See: thoracic.
The whole entire universe lives inside of my right eye. It can be burdensome. In my left eye: everything that could be, all possibilities into a single fluid future. Sometimes in these realities I am whole, sometimes I am dead, and other times I have enough freedom and awareness to reach up and out for safety.
None of these realities make it into the truth. Nobody else will orbit around me. I keep myself safe, I thicken my own skin into hard husks because I am alone here. Orbit, orbit, orbital, of the eyes, my vision circling around any possible prey and pouring into the windows of their being. I used to be the prey; now I am prey wearing the predator’s corpse. Ashen renewal.
VERTEBRAL; spinal.
It asks me this question: What are you fighting for? What are you truly fighting for? I am fighting for myself. I am fighting
myself.
The axial is the core of the body; from the spine everything flows. The difference, however, being the extension of my body - my limbs, my all, every fragile bone - and the lack of quality within it. So this reimposes the question: what am I fighting for?
You could say quality, if you wanted to represent me as something that is capable of attaining it. A being, with its gold hidden. You could also say redemption, but again: its existence is hinged.
The truth, of course, is that I am fighting for nothing; I find only spaces of void. I’m just fighting.
THORACIC; of the chest; contains the heart; lungs.
Here is where it all ends: crossed out, ripped out. There is a big, dark X painted invisibly over my thoracic cavity - this is the spot where it all goes down, the big battle with the shiny new weapons, the casting-out of those no longer holy, the dissection of the body, the spreading of disease. My body is an ocean and it moves like an ocean - unpredictable, raging and furious and timid and serene. Beneath my skin - unspeakable horrors. I can pass anatomically as human but I have ascended humanity.
The heart pumps life through the body. The action potential: my movement is unstoppable and constant, my muscles contract and move and I cannot stop myself from wanting - feeling - needing - wanting - flying through survival. I want the luxury of the ability to just be. To exist in harmony with my constantly changing surroundings, an evolved homeostasis - and survival is one body of water, living is the next. When you pick up a stone and fling it into pools of blood, it does not ripple. It doesn’t skip. There isn’t any movement at all.
Kael K. Martin is a writer and artist living in Lansing, Michigan. They enjoy odd metaphors, visceral imagery, and strong coffee.
Lynette Muniz is a Bronx based Puerto Rican artist. She serves in the U.S Army and also sells her artwork. Her works center around beautiful people of color and she always adds an element of whimsy to them.
Links: (https://linktr.ee/Artheauxlyn)
Links: (https://linktr.ee/Artheauxlyn)
