Cadaver Dogs

Rebecca Loudon's Cadaver Dogs.

*

Go buy it.

*

One of the dangers of exposing yourself to language and imagery like Loudon's is that your own language is revealed for the watery, ineffectual, broken-winged bird that it is, and thereafter feels like ash on the tongue. To read her is to be thrown into the hold of a ship that's going down in heavy seas, madman lashed to the tiller, and you're blindfolded and something smells like blood and the dank world heaves and the air is full of black rain and the stench of rotting fruit and something darker and the thing is you can't stop grinning, you can't stop it, it's terrible, terrible, but there is music and a glowing light under the water and if you have to go, you can't imagine a more wondrous way. And there's a little girl in a white dress who wants you to hold her hand, if you can just get your chains off and get your feet under you.

But that's not it at all.

It is more beautiful. It is more harrowing. It is a wrench in a man's hard hand and swinging, whistling as it arcs down. It is a flower that floats in the air in front of you in the night at the foot of your bed and the sound of your mother singing in the bath down the hall. It is the monster breathing low and deep in the closet and the doorknob is turning, slowly, slowly...

It is yet more.

*

Plus, the fucking cover is a freak show.

***

Thank you, Rebecca, for letting my work hang out with yours. My work is all shy and freaked out about it, but secretly thrilled.

*

Namaste.

***