Page 24 - Haruspex

Thirty Degrees of Aries
I. Topaz black powder. Saline bags of semen. Animal entrails. Crocus blooms.
II. A person hunched over septic tank under the cover of noon, cradling the dead as if he were too afraid to
let them go.
III. A spider web woven from cloth and plastic. Three humans make sun blooms in an attic above. A fourth,
marble of sugar and a curtain of cotton, makes dandelion wine.
IV. A metal cage, capable of holding no fucks, secured to a patch of ivy in a thicket.
V. Birth in the tree-line, where it would be blown apart should the wind not work its magic. Someone
makes a $re and continuously jumps over—back to forth.
VI. A human sacri$ce in a public garden. Nothing grows beyond the threshold of outline.
VII. A life of unlimited availability punctuated by shushes, squeals, and mysterious morning sirens.
VIII. A green bauble that someone set on $re.
IX. Disheveled barge that looks like it's about to tumble over a beach near palm trees with hand grenades
inside their roots.
X. Books that explain why you should be allowed to eat a fruit you shouldn't be allowed to eat.
XI. An opaque dried vermicelli of warlock blessed hard red fruit.
XII. A paint-by-numbers picture book, nothing more than a straggler baby's stuffed toy sent to someone
before the birth of the universe.
XIII. A breakable wafer cut out of a bowl. A tooth from an earthquake. The Statue of Liberty's ear.
XIV. Half a peach, out of reach, at the moment of orgasm.
XV. A newspaper whose publisher once attempted to pass himself off as Gertrude Stein. Forget it; Pisces
season is over.
XVI. Shot glass $lled with sweat and milk and something other than snow and $re.
XVII. A cruci$x carved from nothing but dried goat testicles.
XVIII. Refrigerator with a slide underneath, $lled with razor blades and dye remover. You’re probably on $re. XIX. turkey bacon-wagyu-spiced-chicken sandwich, caramelized onions and $ddlehead horseradish. A roll
$lled with pomegranate seeds.
XX. The function of a double refraction.
XXI. A wooden box inlaid with ruby and spring water that consumes to create.
XXII. Bouquet of roses from a drug-addled sailor's wake.
XXIII. An exit sign with the words "Good luck, welcome back" painted on.
XXIV. You carve stars from three pounds of meat while Aunt Ginger and Uncle Jack fuck behind the
aquamarine curtain. Later, someone will comment on the complex !avor of the beef.
XXV. A tall, delicate cookbook which you pried from a now revived lover's corpse. Glass of Rosé to chase
away the skunk cabbage scent.
XXVI. Orgy. Two beds one room. One of the beds has a mirror betwixt ornate fake wooden posts. Eventually
all in the room $nd themselves within one another.
XXVII. The brown crumbs littering your baby carrier. Now carried within a small plastic baggie in the glove
compartment.
XXVIII. A phallic symbol on a washing machine in use.
XXIX. This is not the time for microwave anything.
XXX. A keg of dandelion wine. A copy of a non-descript manual -- pornographic or otherwise -- on how to
communicate with plants. Two bulls fornicate in the distance.