M.D. feeds her words into the machinery. She presses herself into
the text: sweat, blood, excrement.
It is a vile exercise. It is exquisite, this mysteriousness, this act of
brute survival.
One thinks of feeding; of pressing oil-soaked bread into the open
mouth of a hungry child.
It is vulgar, it is death. It is the white smear of sex.
Piled up, her words are a tower of filthy bodies.
Hunger, poverty, the deep stain of destitution. A clamor of dark
bodies leaning against the grime-stained walls of the city.
She feeds the words into her small blue typing machine. The letters
stick. They stick.
She presses her liquor-stained fingers onto the plastic glide of the
buttons: “M.” “D.”
from Guidebooks for the DeadFind more by Cynthia Cruz at the library
Copyright © 2020 Cynthia Cruz
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Four Way Books.