ARTISTS

I have to run from my deliverance.

The arm felt wrong. He'd worked on it, but the light wasn't good and he didn't have the right tools. The metal cradle that formed a juncture with the stump was slightly dented at the edge so that the alignment was thrown off. The rope that he used to move the arm was getting old. It was starting to fray at the friction point where it slid through the ring piercing his right nipple. He could feel the slip of the arm getting looser each time that he used it.

"New parts, " he said. "Damn."

We are liars.

"Insert a catheter. Put a rubber band or a similar constrictor around the root. Grasp the vascular knob with a pair of forceps, or failing these the right hand and pull forward."

I can smell it on my skin, clinging to it, dripping off of it, entering and circling through the machinery along with my own blood. Like a current. Like a shock. I want to leave it on the wall; a ghost of my hand printed there in a copper scented echo; forgotten by me as I crawl away through glass and wire, but there's a face in the wall...lips and teeth where my hand should go. How can I shut the mouth of another? God's creatures must speak. It is the head of a liar. It needs watching.

We are the bubble, the plastic shield.

The skin was spoiled. She sprawled across the mattress springs and thought about the picture on her leg. She rubbed the pristine surface of the other leg against the picture. They had put it there and now the fluid was running out of her and dripping down and around the rusted coils, slipping like wet rope to the floor and settling there in a dust eddied pool. The smell blossomed up, bit and entered her fluttering nostrils.

All of us are liars.

"Cut around the rim through the skin and peel it back toward the root. Cut up the spongy stuff and discard it but leave about an inch at the base. Tie off the veins in front and"

The blood poured over me like a command, slipping across each blank spot and into every crevice. The tubing of another body draped across me in the darkness...a surprise like an angel. It smelled like heaven, wet and red.

Mohammed speaks, right here! Jesus is dying every minute.

Take me up, he thought. His toes curled around the lip of the window.

"remove the rubber band. Expect some projectile bleeding."

The smell of dirt has heaven in it too, and Jesus is in these little bones scattered around my feet. Jesus is dying every minute. The dust of his bones is mixed in with the concrete that forms a dingy fence around me opened up to the clean sky above. I smell him in it; sharp and bitter as metal shoved cold against the tongue...sweet as the color yellow melting in a lump of butter.

Each cell has a memory, he thought, here in the city of God. He looked down at his withered leg and heard each cell whisper its own recollection of the round and blunted assault that it had suffered. He had smashed them and suffered too. My friends, he thought. He grabbed a pigeon pecking at the bread crumbs he had spread between the open fork of his legs. He twisted the fragile head around.

LOST TO JESUS

said the sign hanging around his neck.

We stretch toward it like flowers turning toward the sun. Pale and pure. Our permanent object of desire.

"Thread a needle and sew up any open parts. Pull the skin down and stitch around the remainder taking care to leave a vertical slit in the center. Remove the catheter and insert a shorter one. Leave this in for a week. Grasp the globular mass on the right and pull down to stretch the skin. Begin cutting at"

A feather drifted across the blue above me and down to rest against a tangled pile of paper and ashes. The blue was like a blue I could know; like the spine of a book...as clean and ignorant as something made out of plastic. Glued against the blue are nine silhouettes. They pull the blue with them as they whirl like wheels.

Blisters to you!

The line of the cut blossomed up from the surface, expanding and flowing into a web of shining red strands. Her wet lace. She held a shard to her face and studied the red washing the glass like mist in the distance.

"Mercy," she said and put her skin to the flame.

The skin of the world is split and bleeding; open to microbes, the Devil and light.

"the forking at the top, making a vertical cut that ends in the middle. Cut deep. It is necessary to go through"

You will all be buried in fire... in lashes; your crinkled, sodden skin rolled in dirt and ashes. Left for the Devil. Left for dead. Heaven calls you, wet and red.

"several layers. Pull out the insides which will be attached to a thick cord. This cord can be divided into smaller bundles"

Pull me up to you. Carve me out like a melon and come live inside.

The inadvertent blue; his limbs stabbing at it as he fell, was a brilliant wash of afterthought...a frame for his descent to his home below.

Scars hold memories. Where is our release?

"of fiber, then each bundle can be severed. This is preferable to attempting to sever the cord with one stroke. Make the cut as"

Once and forever.

RICE AND CHAINS

said the writing on the wall. Echoes of old piss drifted up to his nostrils as he knelt on the concrete floor. He felt the empty space expanding; making a gleaming space within; making him a worthy vessel. He held a hand up and he saw the veins throbbing with light, glowing through the grime of his long neglected skin.

Wheels of fire whirl in the sky against a curtain of pristine blue. Calling us up. Calling you. Scars hold memories, remnants of our gifts to you. Gravity holds us to this place.

"high up on the cord as possible. Discard the severed contents and pack any remainder securely into the opening which you"

My saviours came from behind while I was looking up. Dazed as a cow; I observed the blazing sky, the blue like a language, as they rooted out my evil. The blood blossom is gone. The sun has burned my eyes crisp and clean.

A searing pause, and she was left with a hole...just here. A hole for light to enter and spread. A hole in a place that might have once cupped water or honey or an infant's cradle of skull.

You are a sinner. You can walk in the dust of God. You can follow it like an insect and make it part of your skin. You eat God like a cracker and make it seem like nothing at all. Where is your requirement? Where is your sacrifice? Where are the sad, hardened knots of tissue; the ragged and throbbing margins of wet skin; the frayed veins?

"can then stitch closed."

We are liars. We grieve.

"Repeat on the left side."

I am happy now. I could sleep.