portion of the artwork for J Pascutazz's poetry

The Mother of All Water
J Pascutazz

          How I can’t stop transitioning back
To what I am. Looking for a safe space
          To stick my tongue in. A single use
Receptacle for an indispensable soul

Today, I self-identify as a quagmire
          My soggy bottom turns toxic sludge
Into breathtaking leaf smut. The earth and I
          We’re the toilet’s flush. We take shit

          From everybody, and redistribute the wealth
Dam it all universe. You just had to be this
          Instantaneous hazardous conundrum
Marry your rocket to my sphagnum bog

Honeymoon with me in Niagara Falls
          The fall’s white noise will play our song
Touch me everywhere—like the sun
          Drink the heavy water, call me a drip

          Runoff. Trickle down to the lowest place
Purchase flood insurance, a used houseboat
          Float off in a double creature feature
Think of all the waves we’ll cross through

To be the old men pissing in the night
          My shoreline rising, your melting mirror
Hard to look in, but not break in two
          I’ll have time to drink the plastic bottles

          Your ego came in. Slip like ectoplasm
Through the ceiling, and echo mildew angels
          In your thoughts. More space than matter
Consider this. Your brain is mostly what?

Here is my channel. These are my sounds
          My automatic rinse and spin and cycles
You know the emissions I’ve repurposed
          To be the lady boy in the lake. The leaves

          Fall for my breezy see-through dresses
Somersault, and cartwheel in spiked heels
          Across my face. As they sink I wash them
Absorb their shape and color in my bath

          Ferment until I can almost think bubbles
What I’d like to be in my next life
          An eco model, a beach erosion spread
A heart chill from it’s rippling rest

Who walks off a deck. A lone gull’s cry
          A bridge between the overwhelming
Urge to be and a wet electric blanket
          Wrapped around a muddy missing person

          Maybe I’ll dye my flow to trace it
Outsource my dissolution. Identify
          As a 4th of July picnic. Fireworks
Make me so excited I steam like a spirit

Condense into cloud, network my memories
          Bend rainbows until the ends meet
Bare necessity. And forget what I am
          A fleet of wax paper ships claims me

          As its sea. I was a teenage whirlpool
Thundering home in fossilized footprints
          To the lightning vessel that cut me off
From the mother of all water. I dip my ladle

In her sky, and slide into the deep end
          Pitch my declinations in successively
Blue shades, suck the gold out of the stars
          And dissolve empires between my moist lips


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FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry | Issue 55 | Spring/Summer 2020