#caleb kaiser

[goreprofonde]

- The Lightning Room, with Caleb Kaiser.

[sam-mccrmck]

invisiblesummer in MIT

August 2015

© Sam McCormick

[vaguelykyle]

I'd taste you below the skyline, feel you flex your oak waist, a fleshy summer spring. "A stream was still and I let my lips press against its face, broke that wet glass and fell when torrents burst like breath." You said you couldn't dance. I cupped your hips and showed you how trees swayed. So we rocked, soaked in June, rubbing like a forest. "a bourbon-soaked man grinds like a snake against sweet southern sand. Says this is how it feels when God wipes away the rough spots." We hid beneath palm leaves where waves could barely stroke and our skin slapped a voodoo rhythm that you taught me to sing to. The sounds: shapeless howls, the ghosts of speech, the sound of prayers as heard by God. "My daddy was a preacher with scars in his eyes and his fingers curled around the Lord's. He claimed the devil stole his liver, but really it was memories of his wife. I watched him wither hands full of the wrong skin." One day, we'll find ourselves as sun-dried sparrows fluttering in the snow, pinned together as we turn to steam, as our bones plant like cedars.

How To Talk, by Caleb Kaiser

[motherground]

Of Marshes

On days we'd smother ourselves in wet reeds, mashing our muscles until bruises soaked our skin. When we'd plant teeth along our spines. Or fill mason jars with tomato broth, make reddish swamps between our gums. Once you held a head of mud in your soft hands, a fresh pelt of marsh womb, and its breath blistered into thin-skinned bubbles, squeeming through your sycamore-still bones. Days we were made of currents instead of veins, of clay and fresh-kill, I loved you enough to pulp my lungs into yours, to           slip a straw between your ribs.

-- caleb kaiser

[chinadog-blog]

Me: Where's the vanilla?

Caleb: What do you mean by "vanilla?"

Me: Like, extract.

Caleb: Oh, like extract, gotcha.

Me: Yeah, like straight up vanilla.

Caleb: Well, I don't know about your vanilla extraction baby but I'm vanilla straight up.

Me:

Caleb: I could be your vanilla distraction.