ditch,

Matina L. Stamatakis resides in a frightfully quiet village in upstate New York, where there is virtually no creative or artistic movement. To compensate for the lack of local creative outlets, Matina turns to the internet, where she manipulates and displays digital artwork, poetry, and the occasional noise track from her one-woman wrecking machine, Viscera[e]. Her most recent poetic/art works can be found in Intercapillary Space, La Petite Zine, Crash Test, The Starfish Journal, PFS Post and others. She is the author of ek-ae: a journey into ekphrastic aesthetics (Dusie, 2007), Harmonious Hogwash (VUGG, 2007) with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Phos (Vugg, 2007), Sensoria (2008), a forthcoming chapbook, Metempsychose (Ypolita, 2008), and forthcoming noise album Tissue Arabesques (Artless Intent, 2008). She believes sleep is overrated.

153: Space-Writing

                   lightning spectra

X-Ray Venus

                             her hair  afire

in the dim

              —furious sparks of inquietude

                   unrest          

when the skin of her neck

meets a shiftless colossus

  I will beckon

 that which is impenetrable—                "bone fortress"

                    "scapular armor"

in the deep ovals of her eyes—

a blurred laser pen— I carve myself

                   into her flesh

                             a coarse scalpel—

blade in the night

          sans titre

The Milky Way

                 woman, clever eunuch—

          no bough nor withe where the heaviest

                    bird is sure

                             to feel safe

           no tender flute

          to wet the palate

                   leave the tongue inside the gimlet

                   leave the kaddish well-rehearsed

                       leave the spine of the night, an animal

                             voracious—maw-hungry

                             *

     leave when milky, her breast in white fever,

     leave the pout of parched lips for not my son

      who cries with dry salt on his gums

           I will reserve the spurt

          for something

          more inhuman—

         something permanent,

                               a constellation,

                            aligned & constant

                             *

                   & traverse through

                      Santiago de Compostela

                with his shrunken body on my back

                   although

                              not

                               here

                                       or for

                             where

                               I

                             go

                           is

                             certain

                                 to

                                   offer

                         mollification

                only to migrating birds—

          for the woman who swears

           her body is a gaping pathway

                   to the stars

                    from which I will drink

                     without hesitation

Taxidermy Scars

to make pigeons of our fingers

    [squawk-squawk]—

end up with two beaks, squawk dissected
throats, whoops of incessant squawking

   [it doesn't help to recall
the moment of birds
      in pain—
the house is done: we've built
our syringes out of frozen
      sprigs, synthetic
glossae, all slicked-on

               prostheses]


          *

          she claims
identity is found only inside
          the body—
not outside: beaks
are superficial
parts, so are eyes. feet

          *

I help myself into a bucket of scars,
a one-eyed jackal, arrangements
of skin whittled into trophy bone

           archaeopteryx
glossed-over eyes bewilderment
settling on hollowed-out bodies in mist
she speaks to me like I'm a broken girl
with my hands greedily placed

                inside a cookie jar
           feeling for the emptiness
                  that encrusted

at the bottom long,
long ago

Change of Address

cleared away the TV voice
vacant ceiling save for cobweb

             decide

where boxes go in another room
   then mottled happiness
          lingers, every corner

tells a secret story of times
             spent sweeping
 sweat off of windowpanes

     sweating out the luxury

        of sweat

into a pillbox, seven cubicles:

—sun nudes itself in front of window,
                 the nearest wall
—a fixed door, black
—boxes of glass eyes, wooden teeth
—a sheath of egg white surrounds

like a sea-salted conch,
curio in morning

         [ latitude & longitude
                       against us ]

Self Portrait Without Eyebrows (for Kahlo)

      to reflect with mirrors turned upward—
I've twice endured those Tepaneca silences
                             in

                   masks of lace

mask of birth

masks of counterfeit poseury
to spite the faces of saints

sometimes...    elastic torture machines
sometimes...       ripped toreador jackets
      oftentimes a refused prune,
the pus of excess vanity, hog flesh


    [my arms think of you in circles,
in cartographies of disaster, or the impaled,
                                   shrinking man]

these schizophrenic eyes dim each time
as voluminous shields of black, my lover's
                 child-like breasts


    stings of throaty gestures
from the depths of provoked
                       teeth