DANIELLE VOGEL
from Clasp, a hypnosis project

Dear Reader : A clutch of syllables tied with white string — red clover, lavender, damania, juniper berries, and deer's tongue. A black candle. A bright ring of hair. Let it warp.

A humming through in sheets. Pulled. And then away. Say, spark. Say, flare. I hallucinate your hands, a looping. Lip skin. Eyelash. Elbow. Let it. Stitch you into place even while you shudder. Get into this bed. I am in and out of sound.

*

There is slowness. Gathering bolts of wet color. What asks to be rises in light. The transfusion of blush. While translating, I take the narratives, but I am not able to put them back together. I think: redemption. I've never written this before. I used to think I was interested in dislocation only, but it may be that I am writing toward a buoyancy I have not yet learned to create.

*

Dear Reader : To meet among the tow. Please. Collect the damaged body. I will write before your eyes.

I feel very much as I did at six-years-old willing a pendulum to swing.

*

Dear Body : Press my face against the crib's shadow. Press my face against the nipple. Press my face against the Doberman. Press my face against the doll's mouth. Press my face against the stone cherub. Press my face against the tricycle's horn. Press my face against my father's tie. Press my face against the perfume bottle. Press my face against the Eucharist. Press my face against the rosary. Press my face against the toilet's lip. Press my face against my grandfather's Zippo lighter. Press my face against the feral kittens. Press my face against the plastic covered couch. Press my face against the haunted house. Press my face against the alphabet. Press my face against the driveway. Press my face against the petals. Press my face against mother's ghost. Press my face against his. Press my face against his. Press my face against his. Press my face against hers. Press my face against the cigarette's pack. Press my face against the vodka. Press my face against the cocaine. Press my face.

*

Dissolving the body is a simple trick. Ring a low circle of candles about the middle of the page. Light a taper at its center. Stare into the flickering until you split.

*

Dear Reader : I want to give this to you —

Come here with a register of questions. Bolts of color. A serrated knife. A willingness to fillet.

Hum. One key. Like this. This is what it feels.

To gather. These tiny omissions. All of the things that belong to me. A door in the stars. A door in the tongue. To have slipped —

Danielle Vogel dreams of the narrative that, in its syntactical flickerings, is able to collect and reimagine the damaged body. She is the author of lit, and her writing has appeared most recently in The Denver Quarterly, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Caketrain, and Sidebrow. She investigates the reliquary of the book, divinatory & trance poetics, trauma therapies, and incubation narratives. Danielle grew up on the Long Island Sound and currently lives in Denver with her partner, designer and writer, HR Hegnauer.