PIP: Tucked away in your blind spot is your life’s blood.

SQUID: Yes, I know, but say, what do I know?

PIP: If you want to know all of me, then you already have to the nines.

SQUID: Know you all of what?

PIP: Of course.

SQUID: We’ve run our rails already / and there’s not a dog in heat / that’ll blow the casket off this one.

PIP: The casket gasket.

SQUID: Of course.

PIP: Off course.

SQUID: In here.

PIP: Inhere / out there

SQUID: Of course.

PIP: The moon still rises then, no?

SQUID: It always is.

PIP: There’s a woman made of sand / and all the world is demure as a little wallow girl

SQUID: Psssh.

PIP: I swear to it.

SQUID: By your words alone.

PIP: Of course.

SQUID: Of course so.

PIP: Holy lands / stalagmites / centers of navalty

SQUID: Tomfoolery / tenebrous / zealot-ridden Rimbauds / and Tuesday mournings

PIP: All of it all of the time, no?

SQUID: Sure, of course.

PIP: Center of gravitas.

SQUID: Meander streaming, no?

PIP: Unwillingly so, and thrive bearing—

SQUID: Debutante bed pan scorch bearers.

PIP: Torched and to the nines.

SQUID: Of course!

PIP: Write light mingling and toad moaning.

SQUID: Tower chompers laugh louding at the peak pitch.

PIP: But she couldn’t have known that about her heart just then…

SQUID: Aerodynamic and all.

PIP: The darkness and the light.

SQUID: Hurl-weaning themselves off the Tower of Babel.

PIP: They never had a chance.

SQUID: But it was all chance, no?

PIP: Of course.

SQUID: Yes.

PIP: Tenebrous drippings / good tidings / lost and without found

SQUID: Sleep wells and / tolls and / are also a being

PIP: Without being / been before / never beforehand and

SQUID: Alone and then / no never alone / always

PIP: Before time.

SQUID: Before birth.

PIP: Of course.

SQUID: Savoir.

PIP: Mel-odious maladaptive trites.

SQUID: And a water queen!

PIP: Psssh.

SQUID: Among thirteen salavators.

PIP: And I knew three tigers / a pH / three scales / three trinities

SQUID: A twenty-something kind / of love / kind and in / Love

PIP: Never mind.

SQUID: Load bearing weights.

PIP: Weighing tears in joy of death. We explode, no?

SQUID: Only slightly.

PIP: Tears weighing the death of joy.

SQUID: Rightly.

PIP: And they sing a muting siren song / long / and in / waves

SQUID: Ecstasy encased in enclaves / we rightly sing sweetly / and the / joyousness

PIP: A seedly mustard patch.

SQUID: How come?

PIP: Why not?

SQUID: The thing that things / thinks in the rain / is all that has ever / never been

PIP: Tried and true / so, but blue / here and kicking / it to the nines

SQUID: That’s nonsense!

PIP: We’ll go that way, then.

SQUID: Sure.

PIP: Throne squabblers / threatening / the pious kings / with add-jacinth rays

SQUID: Proprioception.

PIP: And the art of the tail.

SQUID: Aesthetics / the pale bane / of non-laughter’s / rejoice

PIP: Spectral and the / non-locality / infinitesimally warp-watching

SQUID: Dismally rigorous / mortis-arrays / stymied time floodings

PIP: And a gland wrought wretch!

SQUID: Here we are.

PIP: We’re here.

SQUID: Off to it!

PIP: Once again.

SQUID: Yet again, no?

Pip: Of course.

SQUID: Yes, always.

 

Brad Baumgartner is a writer, theorist, and Lecturer in English at Penn State. His work has appeared in Vestiges, Minor Literature[s], Black and Grey Magazine, Cyclops Journal and others. Ongoing critical and creative projects include Weird Mysticism, a monograph, Daring Desert, a collection of fragments and aphorisms, and Celeste, an experimental novel.