[The Colossus] on the Life & Subsequent Death of Sylvia Plath

[The Colossus] On the Life & Subsequent Death of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath suffered from the most exquisite depression to ever reach a woman's heart. Poetry, in her words, in her eyes, possessed by the demons of unsatisfying conception, revitalized itself, born from the fusion of the embryo within the womb of the aesthetic. If we owe anything to this woman, it is to, everyday of our lives along the palate of art, to praise her tragic brilliance.

In Plath's poetry, there are eras born that have only existed in her stanzas and died once her poetry ended. It was a pain that bore the mirror image of itself, dropped anchor in a deep metaphysical self-exile and detached itself from this Euclidean limitation given to humanity by humanity.

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want to live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited."

The lives Plath wishes to live is not due to envy, her limitations are not due to a literary one; they were all imposed on her from a dubious and skeptical environment. Her marriage to the poet Ted Hughes, a self-loathing, insecure philandering artist, whom Plath propped up out of full  means of belief, caused her retreat into a blantant madness, an immobility that threatened to petrify her. But even in seeing lives lived on a more blissful plane, a chronic infidelity that could hinder the creativity of most; it was sadness, the flicker impulse of depression itself that caused flight in her poetry and flightlessness in her life.

The average human facing diversity will abandon themselves in haste, misdirect anguish, lose equilibrium in their upright walk upon this earth; Plath fled inward, charted her sadness, composed sonnets that echoed pass her suicide  in 1963. Her true sadness had no origin, its redoubtable advance upon her mind induced the abstraction that in turn, induced the abstract language she has become well known for. It is in her very words;

"If you expect nothing from anybody, you're never disappointed."

that we see the hallmarks of a woman competent of her own true condition, shattered beauty that proposes its own terminal splendor. She has taken the ineffectual actions of poets pen-to-paper and reunited us with our own sensibility, as the giver, reunited us with our humanist torture, the flaws of personal character that can reverberate brilliantly as an echo in a cathedral.

We've lost something, we are not free, adrift in a phantom tirade, separated from the human history of dismemberment and immurement. If we are well to beware of anything, if we are to risk anything, it is the leap from the precipice of our own concocted dreams, phantasmas, torrential miasma in an age where disassociation
frees us. We chart the earth, the depths of the sea yet we've forgotten the algorithm in which everything has been set forth upon that is the autonomous pulsation of the individual or the dream of individuality. We are born individually but we are not meant to live individually if we are to disregard the malformation that insanity brings.

The day man arrived on this earth, the very next day, he had made slaves of his own, driven himself into doldrum by his own blatant captivity, become infernal slaves to woman and sought escape from his actuality, his self-imposed misery. It is from poetry anthropos truly finds an equilibrium, a sense of revitalization. Plath's lost of equilibrium was also her friction upon the earth, a reciprocal disaster that begets catastrophe. And if there is anything confessed of her soul, it is a composed character in its own ruins. The Sylvia Plath we've come to know is the Sylvia Plath who was, who could not be saved despite her will or the Karma-driven will of an indescribable, incomprehensible universe to rescue her from a perennial turmoil.

Very few possess transcendence, or ever access such metaphysical and psychic measure. Plath's mind, mutinous against her own shattered heart, itself was a dampened, quintessential vortex that devoured all pestilence, spun it out into a mathematical drama, an abomination of the becoming having become, a double helix strand forfeited its genome rights.

What has been left in the aftermath of Plath's suicide is the seemingly inane sense of poetic prose that has failed to find its way to the very ideal of dazzle, of charm, of seduction, of satisfying our instinct for sadomasochism. It is clear that the carousel never ceases its evolution, as it is also clear that the world may never again be removed from its very axis by language once all great voices, imminent, relevant, malevolent forces, tragedians, have fallen into the abyss created for the entire earth to be suction into as a whirlpool. It may also be clear that the art forms originated to distort the human figure too may not take their rightful throne. The only thing that remains unclear, unpredictable, is when will the next hatch from egg into a fully formed woman to attest what misery truly is, what it truly can become, an endearment to all of history itself.

-Dontrell Lovet't

[Nora] a short story

[Nora]

Nora- that was her name, a stranger of the many I hand encountered on State Street while roaming as a troubadour deep into the night under the deceased of the moon. On my way down West Johnson, past the building that houses Tutto Pasta that has stood since 1898, I watched her walk by and quickly swipe a leftover slice of pizza from an abandoned table and quickly stash it in the satchel on her shoulder. It was without consequence that I noticed her moving down the shadows of State performing this same feat of scavengery.

Without alarming her of my knowledge of the vulture in her, I approached her. It was not all false pretense; She was an attractive sort of plain Jane with succulent symmetry that still could be seen under her baggy, second-hand thrift store apparel. She had a natural beauty accompanied with a scruffy appearance, somewhere in between an orphan collecting cans on the street and a woman who just woke and wandered around her privacy in complete comfort. What was the true facilitator of my fancy for her was her openness. Instead of pretending she was doing something else, anything else, she didn't fail to mention in our introduction that hunger was the most frequent visitor.

I treated her to a dinner at Cosi, a plentiful dinner, Chicken Parmesan Sandwich on multigrain, sea salted chips, large bowl of tomato basil soup with another slice of multigrain bread and a rocky road brownie. There was no expense to spare for her good company. One could hardly imagine that she was alone in the world and on the contrary, she spoke as though she hadn't had a good conversation in years.

After, the night doesn't end. She invites me back to her apartment five blocks towards East Johnson, speaking of her origins and family. She was from a lower-middle class farming family in South Dakota, somewhere near where the Black Hills begin their drastic roll to and from the earth. She had one sibling who was lost to a rogue case of Diphtheria, a young sister, which caused her mum to take into alcohol ever so frequently and her dad to spend more time caring for her than the farm, which in turn, begin to show a decline in capital. She had left South Dakota to study Physics, reserving a deep childhood fascination with Nikolai Tesla and Albert Einstein, yet due to her having to survive, she spent less time in their theorems and more in the facts of science, hunger.

Only in the modern state of thought, as in a city, can on be seen and still be transparent. An accumulation of lore brings forward the better vision of the eye into the world, partakes in all the things that become of it. The decisive movement then becomes an invigoration, more is then as never before asked of language to clarify and translate in belief an elimination process will undergo and undertake, narrative-hero and heroines only see when the eye suffers distortion, goes bland and miraculously, if with hope, vision is mysteriously restored. Disparity seeks to gorge on the spirit, finding that it is an ephemeral thing, falls deeper into itself because hunger follows when the meal is never offered up.

As hunger becomes, it shows no mercy to the starving- it devours what rudiments drift about in the body, the remnants of the stored nutrients, cannibalism enacts itself inside. Mankind has been shape-shifted in the means of avoiding such monstrous physiological response, doing all it can to keep itself fed, full, gluttonous and aversive. It is a force of our own making that serves us, puts our backs to the wall and hands us the ultimate ultimatum; eat or die.

The privacy of her apartment that her parents could barely afford was convenient- there was no one there to see her suffer, roll about on the couch, cradling her stomach, too weak to walk to the union terrace for the free meal afforded to "financially challenge" students.

The following day I was off of work and she had no classes scheduled. So we chatted the night away, enjoyed film after film. At times, I'd run to a corner store and grab snacks for us, return and remove my socks as she always insisted I do when nestled up next to her. We were soon alseep in the arms of one another. A demon must have been at play between our resting bodies. We both came from sleep to a dream, our hands all over one another, insatiable and wild kisses, locking limbs and squirming bodies. Removing her clothes was as stripping the world free of an ugly facade to find a pristine primer beneath.

She takes the thrust of my pelvis shamelessly, with an inalienable ambivalence, moaning that patois of English that compulsion, desire, physical congress, intimacy and coitus in admixture brings about. The world split wide, its origins unmistakably as she transpires, transforms and transposes to the cumean sibyl of frightless endeavors. Neither of the follicle that parts partial a hemisphere of the mind from outside of this life nor an inhuman poltergeist that has never lived, still she relinquished all decision to be or not to be, pulled beneath the mortal realm to be catapulted far into the nethermore of stagnant night terrors. The overseer of the night, that mean-spirited nothing to never be known crawled onto her, inside of her and took it upon himself to journey deep until lost somewhere along the faults of her endometrium. Broken beyond repair, severed beyond recognition, she was, as woman out of darkness, now a anew, fearless. A quartermaster to the axis of the womb, again, I took that voyage deep within her, dying, choosing to drown rather swim in the vaginal sea that her venus gave way tears to. There's an allure to the flogging she withstands, the all but innocuous gestures that my hands stains to her trachea in the blithe the common eludes, the dreaming and woe-begone depraved of the subterranean lustre. Somewhere between our bodies was not only a burn made from the shifting friction, but the lost pagentry long abandoned for mechanics, biology woven irregularly into the strophe, the antistrophe, the epode, a luminous life between the flesh, incidental spawn from our pores. Of no avail, our fluster could not be defeated and we surrender and lie restless upon one another beneath the white flag that is our submission. Twice she surrenders, twice she is defeated, into an indentured servant, then into manumission of the harlot who dares not enter the doors of the magdalene asylum. After our minute deaths, we were back on the elliptical to our deaths in opiate euphoria. She slept naked as the earth left bare after being brutally assaulted. I make a whore of her, then build the Magdalene for her reform, for her salvation, until such time the blood in my veins begin to boil for touch and I'll visit her in her dorm, amongst other retentive whores, and make a whore of her all over again. That was her hell, the virtue I handed to her, her only keepsake.

She refers to me time and again while in refractory as her "intellectual disaster" or "the most haunted mind in all of man."


Nora gave herself to feed herself, acknowledged the primitive method to feed the other. There was no shame to be had in her humanness response- none to my own. Finding a meal, being on the verge of collapse was not the ally of a student- the mind begins, as the body, to disintegrate from hunger. Begging begins to wear off in appeal, few friends she had saw her as a parasite, the one who collected the scraps after having lunch, a lunch she couldn't play for. Even in the modern city of Madison, she resembled the transient on the road, always lying face to face with indigence, survival an instinct if she was to continue to soldier on and go forthright into tomorrow. She thought not of the future but of the presence, time depending on the next meal. Too much competition for thrown out scraps in dumpsters kept her way from the bum-ridden straights and corporate-owned restaurant that would rather throw food to the dogs than feed a human in need. There was no time to become a victim or see herself as one; survival kept her quickly, drastically climbing the incline while her contemporaries survived off of family, scholarships and the planar.

Nora was beautiful in my eyes, not stricken, yet stricken, with the time to go inward and only think of herself. The ailing with having to cope and stay afloat was the buoy she clung to. While parties went noisily throughout the night, she was out, as a vampire, searching for food, knowing while she had a full belly, while her intestines drew in the nutrients of the latest feast, it, hunger, would revisit and overstay its welcome until it was extinguished once again.

I think of Nora every time hunger begins to sink into my stomach, when I think of the rolling black hills of South Dakota. I think of the humanist condition impelled by this insatiable yearn, the transitory fix of a simple meal. I think of Nora.

-Dontrell Lovet't

[Little Birds] A short story

 




  To the very delight and premature expectations of new neighbors, Colette was an old soul, not
acquainted with the obsequious rubbish of the modern generation. Only Alumni of Northwestern for
about a week, her decision to remain near her alma mater was in direct result of the family she acquire
throughout the years. She had come from the desolate town of Juno- a few shambled blocks in the
midst of the west Texas desert, situated between 1930's-circa-possibility and oblivion, and once she
made it out, she vowed never to return. Within her 17 years of knowing nothing but, she'd lost her
abusive dad, opiate-addicted mother and two younger brothers; there had to be more to life than death
and desolation.And there was.

   This world that she imagined, this world that she envisioned and wanted to live, she found within old
books, inside of a small, defunct library near the outskirts of Juno. The smell of musk and leather
interwove with the heat that seared the binds of outdated books, dust hid the covers and at times she
had to wipe it away to see the author. Inside of these covers were stories that touched her heart, made
her cry, made her smile, taught her to relinquish clichés and to become a thinker. She discovered truth
from reading multiple opinions and made her mind up on how history played out, or how it could.
Sending nearly every day in that small library ensured her freedom, a place to run away every day and a
Valedictorian spot amongst her contemporaries, the spot that paved her path into Northwestern, far
from those sandy roads and the little birds that she always watched out the windows and imagined their
destinations.

   Colette pursued literature as her major, the understudy that put the pupil under the sweetest duress;
being overwhelmed with the words of dead novelist gave focus and purpose to many, but for Colette, it
was life given-a-many-a-times. Instead of 5,000 words, she wrote 15,000, 3-5 pages in MLA format
became 10-15; her disquisition was 1,000 pages on the contrast of modern literature versus that of the
19th century. Even in her rare down time, she'd write unassigned essays and critiques, which made her
a big hit and secured her a position on staff beneath her own Comparative Lit Professor upon
graduation. By her junior year, it was common to see her lunching with the Dean, discussing Chopin and
Wilde. It wasn't her fierce intellect or her drive that was admired amongst the offspring of the
bourgeois; it was what she came from, the gutters, the lows and rose from such obscurity. She came
from the vileness portrayed in the horror stories of Capote, of Joyce, Faulkner, Miller, Bukowski, Celine
and Fante- many aspiring novelist on campus may write of hunger but Colette was the only one to everexperience it firsthand. Such stories told were published in the campus paper, making her the
fascination and marvel, the laureate of southern lowlife, the motif of where dreams can lead.
Colette was little known outside of the campus of where she was popular but with solidarity and
kindness, her neighbors became fond on her alien appearance and began to warm up to her. Everything
she stood for, everything she accomplished because of those beliefs was well admired and it was rare
for a full day to pass without one or multiple neighbors to visit with tea, coffee, truffles, biscuits or other
refreshments in company. She was an avid storyteller and even without embellishment, she captivated
the surrounding observers and fans as though she was the first lady to cross an undocumented,
uncharted continent and returned unscathed with the maps and proof of lost cities that were once
englobed in myth. How could someone who seemed so frail, so petite, walk barefoot on the burning
asphalt during a sandstorm, walk in to see her beloved mother lifeless with a needle hanging from her
vein, in the same home where her only siblings died in their sleeps before the age of 1?

   There was nothing taboo about the human condition to Colette, even when it seemed so on those days
where she would regress back to that old library with the cracking bonds and dusted covers, an empty
stomach and not a dime in her pocket. A library card ensured she could take back to that double-wide
trailer 3 miles walk from the sanctuary, whatever life she decided to dissect. Losing oneself to find
oneself is necessary to restore the confidence and want of continuum and if she learned anything from
the many books she read, was that the conflict with home was present in all the lives of past artistoriginating
from doesn't oblige reconciliation nor return. That small town between nothing and less gave
her the hope to want, the hope to escape the ashes of her lineage, bury once and for all those skeletons
and the fear of what awaited outside of those city limits. The survival of childhood grants a writer stories
to tell for lifetimes to come and satisfies that frantic need place inside of them from those origins to find
that road from sufferer to artist, artist to the triumph over art. So she lifted herself with the graceful of
flight and caught the wayward wind, as those little birds that gave her wonder as to what was out thereand
now, in flight, she would drift on the accidental breeze until such a time she would find happiness.

-from [The Paper Womb]

Dontrell Lovet't

[Olga] Pablo Picasso's right-side immortal

          Anyone who has ever had the initiative to visit Paris, that is for its rich history as an artistic mecca, may have become familiar with the adoration of Parisiennes; Napoleon III and Olga Picasso, two, some would say, with as much inclination as the next, defined an era of art between Napoleon’s reign and Olga’s zenith.

          Born in the Russian Empire in 1891, in what is today Ukraine, Olga’s childhood ambition to be a ballerina was the very dream that brought her face to face with Pablo. Already making a name for himself as an artist, Picasso designed the costumes for [Parade], Sergei Diaghilev’s and Jean Cocteau’s collaborative ballet, which took center stage at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. And as classic Picasso, propelling charm, intelligence and the spell of the artist, Olga departed the touring ballet as she delved into a freefall love affair with Picasso, who invited her back to live with him in Paris upon their return from Barcelona that very year.

          Almost a year since the day they met, in 1918, Olga Khokhlova became Olga Picasso in the observation of Max Jacob and Jean Cocteau. While the Great War (the war to end all) was coming to a final yet destructive close and the Great Influenza became its predecessor, taking the life of both August and Rose Rodin, Olga became Pablo’s first wife and the mother of his first-born child and son, Paulo. The birth of Paulo was the birth of their deterioration as a couple. After discovering Pablo’s affair with his 17-year-old Paramore, Olga took Paulo and moved to southern France, filing for the divorce which Pablo would refuse due to, under French Law, having required to divide his estate evenly with Olga. Olga would be married to Picasso until her death in 1955 but with Picasso, when those four years of inseparability was abundant, Olga picked up the brush, familiarized herself with acrylic, led Pablo to place vivid vision on bland canvas, creating unimaginable masterpieces. It came be said that Olga, as his muse and wife alone, was another era in the many Pablo Picasso would begin, but the only to eroded across all the rest.

          Evolutionary Biologist would postulate that monogamy for most humans is such a difficult feat inasmuch we, as a species, weren’t meant to be monogamous and with that very postulation, Pablo isn’t given an out or exclusion from breaking his vows, even in biology, a man’s crimes committed are always his to be held accountable for. If the “Non-monogamy” postulation so happens to prove solid, then too is its other half, the part which makes marriage so much more a beautiful becoming, something that endures, if love is enough to deter two humans from their own biological pull, stay afloat against the falling waves of overwhelming odds, dance in the dazzle of “temporary insanity,” an act that has been known to prolong its effects. Pablo’s legacy required 9 decades to solidify; between 1917 and 1921, was all that was needed for Olga, her reparation, the part of the estate she was denied, having endured love for such a restless soul as Pablo, so that our admiration of her sacrifice, can find its place to dance on her tongues as she once dance in Chatelet.

-Dontrell Lovet't

Preview of [Of Dikes & Deities] A short story cycle

Preview of [Of Dikes & Deities] A Short Story Cycle

            Intolerable kisses; the realities of sobriety- the obliteration of the hymen to the boorish impel of missionary position and youthful vigor. Sweat pouring from the forehead reaches his chin as he raises his head in natural response to pleasure. Madeleine turns her head to the side to avoid more. Bodily fluids exchange; saliva, tears, semen, sweat- all came of no surprise and though a virgin only moments before Chad (whatever his last name was) punctured and became the first to enter her tunnel, her experience as a demivierge introduced her to the fluster of asperity of the male counterpart. Yet the pain of vaginal intercourse was but a small price to pay, if indeed, she was to succeed in a higher purpose than finding love.

            A man is only as good as his last orgasm, his last sperm deposit, in nature, procreation is the epicenter of male existence. The drone, the Sausage Fly, the Praying Mantis, the Rodentia, the Black Widow all holds the simplicity of the animal kingdom and as a pupil of reproduction; Madeleine knew her goal to be highly tangible. With a quick finish, Madeleine forms her legs in a triangle guard hold around Chad to force him deeper inside as he released, gritting her teeth to a pain so excruciating it nearly rendered her unconscious.

            Once the aftermath of an orgasm subsided, Chad slowly pulled his flaccid-bound phallus from Madeleine, noticing a small spill of blood. “You’re bleeding,” Chad discloses with an admixture of both concern and vainglory.

The bleeding was minimal, not what Madeleine expected. She’d heard horror stories of friends who’d taken that leap into womanhood before her who, from their accounts, nearly exsanguinated. Anatomy varies from one woman to the other, while one may be less equipped for life from birth, the other may suffer minimal sickness throughout her entire life. By the time Madeleine returned after excusing herself to clean herself up, Chad was gone, not to her surprise nor despair; it is both usual for a man a woman just met only a few hours prior. The taboo would be if he stuck around inasmuch it is easier to leave rather than deal with the emotions attached. It served Madeleine schedule honestly- only a few hours from then she would be entertaining yet another guy, one she knew a bit better. She made a habit of noticing Jamal’s eyes always burning a hole through her blouse, to her D cups and encouraged his comments of tongue rings. Once inhibited, Madeleine knew if she was to succeed in her mission, she’d have to evolve, Darwin’s theory, survival of the fittest. A tongue piercing wasn’t so bad nor were the lessons and experiences of using it in conjunction with short-cut shirts that barely held her cleavage; if pornography is incapable of teaching sexuality to the inexperienced, than its mainstream culture holds no true value beyond cathartic release. A blowjob always sets the tone and most men, during the course of, would falter from their original wist of oral sex and yearn for the entrance into the second or third orifice. With all the modern knowledge and enthusiasm, Madeleine ignored the pain still resonating, using special numbing agent in conjunction with a few Tylenol following a quick shower.

            If a woman can handle 919 men in a matter of 24 hours, Madeleine was optimistic at her ability to handle one more. Nevertheless, she couldn’t help but to think of the myth of Negro ancestry and their male endowment. If Chad could hurt her, what could Brandon do? Her strategy was simple, once overheard by her stepmother, Kasey Carlyle, the self-declared “Snicker Liquor,” whom herself once known a black man a few nights or two, oral sex would be the key; to titillate and manipulate until he begins to shake uncontrollably, then take him deep inside of her.

            Brandon arrived on time, greeting her as the friend Madeleine believed him to be- but friendship was moot. There was something much more valuable in the workings, something much more permanent that made friendship seem folly. Within the first few seconds of the film, Madeleine initiates, kissing Brandon, allowing his hands to explore the curves he’d been dreaming of for so long, while simultaneously yet pondering the myth. With slight rubs to his groin area, she would feel his arousal grow. She adjusted her back away from the sofa to make it easier to remove her blouse and the moment it was off, Brandon leaned over and began kissing her breast, both his hands groping her massive breast before he pulled them free and found her nipples with his tongue. For the first time that day, she had become aroused herself and it gave her the pep to get to her knees, pull Brandon’s phallus free from between his zipper and began polishing it with saliva. He was big but not as big as her fanciful mind made him out to be and that was of great relief. She licked up and down his shaft until it was well lubricated and took him into her mouth, sucking on him with such enthusiasm that his sighs were a mesh of sensual pleasure and surprise. This time she added the use of her hand, remembering not to grip his phallus too tightly, as her step mum warned her not to do, and jacked the opposing of her sucklings. As needed, she added indulgence, moans, giving off the impression that his phallus tasted good to her, as though she could suck all day and get all the nourishment she needed, all the nourishment all true women only needed according to one of her idols Anais Nin. For the occasion, she wore a short mini skirt, an article that could have passed off for a piece of lingerie. She couldn’t imagine herself again on her back being ravished by such a sizeable homologue, so she made the decision to control both depth and pace this time around. When Brandon was well flustered, she stood, began pulling down her panties until he took over and pulled them farther down. She climbed over his legs, placing both of her knees outside of his, using her light secretion from arousal and the remnants of her saliva still alive on the head of his phallus, she slowly place him and painfully and easily used her body weight to ease herself down onto him. Brandon could see that she was experiencing a bit of pain, so gently, he placed his hands on her waist until she was all the way down.

“Just like that, there you go baby,”

-he murmurs encouragement and it in turn Madeleine gave him something to encourage always encourage and afterwards, to always crave.

            Brandon, feeling the constriction of her warm vaginal walls against his flushed phallus, instinctually begins to kiss and lick her neck as his hands guided her hips up and down. The first fluctuation sent Madeleine into a painful moan that ended with a pleasure-filled sigh, throwing her head and body back as he sped up the pace, sucking on her nipples, losing a bit of his gentle nature. Animal instinct took over, Madeleine was in a full ride, a hard, deep repeating slam onto the base of Brandon’s phallus, crying out his name followed by blunt “fuck!”

There was an attempt to stay parallel but pleasure soon over took Madeleine after a bit of pain was out of the way and she again fell back, enjoying the feel of Brandon going in and out of her, his hands running up and down her body, the grasp of her breast. Her mouth begin to water, her voice falling away, her knees now shaking- she was for the first time, about to experience an orgasm and she did so just as Brandon fell into neuromuscular euphoria, releasing inside of her, his seed shooting all over an open cervix that contracted to pull in all of what came from his urethral bulb.

            It didn’t take long till after Brandon had left that Madeleine was once again inside of the shower, a quick one, hitting the hot spots; time was of the essence. Drying off very briefly, she lied on her back in her bed, her legs elevated and held by the side of her walls. Now all there was to do was to wait and see.

[2]

                        Sperm in competition are like men in competition over who will get the prize Madonna and in such a case, the penetration of the ova by way of shredding through the zona pellucida. Containing more than 30 elements, semen takes up to as little as an hour to reach a woman’s fallopian tubes and can live inside of her uterus for up to 5 days. The average male produces 76 million sperm per ejaculation- with two men in youth with high sperm count, sperm competition would assure that Madeleine would get the strongest to fertilize her ova. She had timed her ovulation perfectly, a small window at the end of June, which according to Playboy Magazine, the month majority of people tend to be deflowered. The female reproductive system is a consistent one and even so, very fragile. Over 7 million women were treated for infertility with an estimated 5 billion dollar spent the preceding year Madeleine decided to become sick with child. With the majority of first cycle treatments unsuccessful, the average bill for in vitro fertilization cost $12,500, a select procedure that most insurance companies refuse to cover. Only 42% of assisted-reproduction cycles lead to a live birth with a woman who is younger than 35. Worldwide 48.5 million couples are unable to conceive even after 5 years of attempting. Infertility might as well being a rampant plague to Madeleine, one she felt she was invincible to. The confidence of youth in life is like a deer being shot while his adrenaline is running full bolus- because his will to live has kicked in to survive, he doesn’t feel, much less know of his fatal wound that will end him within 2 miles of an attempt escape from the greatest prey with the least sharpened instincts in nature. Youthful flesh and fresh organs free of disease and wear and tear can go much further than the ones closer to succumbing to Hayflick’s Limit. It wasn’t long before Madeleine begin to feel the effects of morning sickness and the craving for foods that she never cared for, that she knew her promiscuity was fulfilled, knew that only in a matter of months, she would join the legion of mothers who had come before here, and those who were mothers in the presence, and of course, those who would see her growing belly and dream to come after.

            Madeleine’s mother was practically a ghost around the house, spending a great amount of time traveling on conferences and trysts with men around the country; so if an average teen would lack parents or validation, Madeleine had opportunity to conceal her pregnancy, until she knew at such time, it was a take it or leave it deal; left to the mercy of her mother, the fetus would be aborted and Madeleine shipped off to a boarding school at once. So she decided to wait till the first trimester had concluded to inform her mother that she had been raped by an unknown contemporary, at a party that she failed to recollect the address of setting. She would leave no loose ends nor give any details to give her mother leads to go about, she even begin to frequent Catholic mass to further submerge herself in the cloak of pro-life, then duly severing her contact with both Chad and Brandon, two more loose ends she couldn’t afford, both of whom served their primary and eventual purpose, sperm donors. And as her belly grew, so did her confidence, her ambitions. She found herself planning 1, 2, 5, even 10 years out, the name of her child, whether it would be a home or hospital birth, whether or not to take an epidural or brave the pains equivalent to 20 bones fracturing simultaneously in the body; there was so much to plan in so little time and to her complete surprise, her mother, placing aside what would surely be her daughter’s forfeit of a higher education, albeit temporarily, in grace of the certainty of being  a grandmother. Everything was in favor of Madeleine’s quest and destiny, something she had forged had finally come to fruition with both physical and mental determination and she felt it thoroughly a privilege to have captured her dreams at such a young age, and all it took, was a bit of skin and biological maneuvering; who said reckless sex didn’t pay out?

            Then that inevitable day came, when full-term presented a fetus daring and willing to come into the world via the trauma of birth. Taking the antiquated method taken by woman who had no choice but to follow suit with the lack of medical advancements in the past, Madeleine opted not to see an Obstetrician, take pre-natals or even discover the sex of her child; every trimester was spent on strolls, planning meals by the day, scouring the multiple baby showers, congratulations, mommy posts and afternoon park visits with nannies, mothers and mothers-to-be. There were no Lamaze classes, not a single consult nor worry to be had; she was going to be a mother and thus far, all the odds that were and could have been against her, all flailed and failed, destiny was on her side, time too, a confederate. Her mother was there and somehow her state of ailing with a child made their relationship much better, more akin to a friendship than a mother-daughter dilemma.

            Madeleine went into full-blown labor in record time, four to nine centimeters in a matter of half an hour. Perspiration covered every inch of her skin as she lied in her mother’s arms, in agony, pain and pleasure principle both clashing, the pain of feeling as though she was being split into two and the pleasure of knowing that she had every will of strength to exit what was the entire being to change her life and secure her future. But after four hours of labor, no crowning was in sight. A quick call into the paramedics led Madeleine’s mother to believe it could be a breach or something could be wrong; who could know, all of the medical work ups, sonograms, checkups have been skipped, so the possibilities could be endless.

            After some protest from Madeleine refusing to release her antiquated idea of having her child at home, her mother convinced her to allow the ambulance to intervene and clinicians to complete the birthing process. Madeleine despised hospitals, the nosocomial infections, the ineffective, ineffectual American healthcare system, the decrease in skill of the healthcare workers endemic to it.

Legs in stirrups, pain reverberating throughout her body, a doctor and student intern between her legs, her mother holding her hand, Madeleine struggles, continuously asking, continuously wondering, exactly when would she be asked to push. But that demand, that alert never arrived and it never would.

            Madeleine, still in pain, looked up to see the doctor almost in disbelief, asking the intern to run and get some test, whatever test, she couldn’t make out or understand but she feared, not for herself but for her baby; after all, that’s what a mother and mother-to-be does. Despite her worries, the pains became too great to bear and Madeleine saw a descending blackness upon her eyes, then it was all blackness, a lapse of time coming to a complete stop, then a sudden halt in the noises of her own screams and around her, she fell into a world of nothing.

            Coming back into consciousness, Madeleine slowly regained her bearings, looked around and found her mother unsettled in a chair, a look of worrisome and confusion about her face. As her eyes opened wide, her mother quickly walked over to her, crossing the room, where Madeleine’s head stop full on a still enlarged belly.

            “What happened,” she asks her mother groggily.

            “Baby,” her mother wipes streaming tears from around her face, drowning her cheeks, “I don’t know.”

            Madeleine finally found panic bothering her, “Where’s my baby?”

The only answer she received were sobs, echoing around the rooms as if they were the only sounds in the world, as if they were bouncing along the walls, knowing there was no way or reason to leave the air of misery, tattooing itself into the sheetrock, an intramural prayer that all unfortunate has come or will come to know.

            Madeleine began to go into hysteria, raising her voice so loud it completely made all sobs from her mother defunct. “Mom, where’s my baby?!”

Suddenly she felt if perhaps no one was listening to her, that she may have been in a dead zone, baring and blaring only a voice she could hear that the world had gone deaf to. The more she screamed, the more she seemed a mute, no one was listening, why wasn’t anyone listening? All she wanted was to hold the child she carried for 9 months, a child she nurtured, rebuilt her life around the very gestating miracle blooming inside her.

            The doctor Madeleine vaguely remembered came rushing into the room, joining her mother in trying to calm her fluttering anxiety. Everything around her seem to go red, her skin crawled with the want, the need to see her child, the product of so much long before she entered the door of her first trimester. She screamed and screamed as she heard the voices to try and calm her begin to add up, though she saw no one and nothing she could distinguish from the veritable crimson, ever-gradual, so deep she could have believed herself to be going blind if not so mad with color. The only thing she could hear was the doctor telling her mother, “this is normal, it’s a side effect of her condition, expect it to come and go for the better part of a month or two at the most.”

            It took about half an hour to completely calm Madeleine, her fatigue from thrashing and screaming aiding the medical intervention. When she was all settled and once her breathing returned to normal, her vision began to return to its original state of sharpness, her hearing lost its acuteness.

            The doctor approached her, pulled up a chair and sat next to her bed.

“It’s going to be hard for you to hear this Madeleine, there isn’t a baby, there never was.”

“I..I don’t understand, did my baby die, was it stillborn?”

“Madeleine,” the doctor reiterated clearly, “there was never a baby.”

She found the strength to sit up, still hoping that she was in some kind of cosmic tragicomedy, or that her mind was playing tricks on her, overplaying its hand at night terrors.

Once the doctor saw she was in a position where she was fully comprehensive, he continued, “It’s called Pseudocyesis, a false pregnancy.”

Now Madeleine found herself so lost in confusion, all she could do was repeat what the doctor’s words were.

“uhh…false? I carried the baby, I had morning sickness, labor pains, swollen limbs..”

“Yes, it’s difficult to explain because currently science can’t explain it. The best explanation is at some point your Endocrine system, the system that secretes all the hormones your body needs to function, must have gone haywire and begin to secrete the hormones we see in women carrying a child.”

Madeleine was rendered speechless, unable to form any thoughts, any opinions to give, any more rebellion to a situation that seemed definite, final. She just lied back in her bed and stared off at the wall, drowning out the world by pure will. An incredible sadness overcame her as she still waited for the nightmare to subside. But it never did.

            Madeleine was taken home a few days later by her mother. She was in almost a catatonic state, barely eating, barely taking in fluids, lost in disbelief, like an invalid in an eventide home. Her mom took a sabbatical from work to look after her, to see after her, as the Psychiatrist told her of her daughter’s frailness, giving her information on sudden and spontaneous chemical changes in the body of someone suffering from what was an extremely rare phenomenon in the human body. So her mother reminded her to shower, helped her to shower, practically forced her to eat the little she did, made sure she left her room, visiting regularly to ensure she wasn’t hanging at the end of a rope from the ceiling and that is how life inside their home was regulated until such time Madeleine’s mind was able to regulate a more self-suitable standard.

            After about a month of the tiresome routine of ailing from the colliding chemical aftermath of being “with and without” child, Madeleine convinced her mother that she was well enough to go out, knowing that the fresh air would do her well, reemerging into the world where the beauty she’d forgotten existed and also the beauty she’d been denied. How does a woman return to a state of grace once she comes full circle to see the dream she has been dreaming had been just that, a dream, and awakening, what else has she to hold on to other than the reality of having nothing to hold?

            Madeleine found a park she’d never seen before in a neighborhood she’d never before visited. She had no bearings inasmuch bearings didn’t matter, not much more did. Sitting on a bench, she appeared to be the most unkempt, disheveled woman, the saddest woman anyone can ever hope never to see. Although she received sporadic stares of inquisition, there were all vague, brief enough for Madeleine to escape the radar detection parents tend to have to protect their offspring from lurking danger. I mean, what was it that they would be fearful of? It was just a sad woman on a bench, having a moment and feelings to her, bothering no one else in the world, just herself in her world.

            The children scattered the park, playing with no a care in the world; chase, hide and seek, cracking the whips, a festival of complete chattering. It was then, there, at that moment, surrounded by all the life denied to her, that Madeleine felt her feet carry her, movement without effort, towards a gorgeous little girl playing near the trees by herself. She seemed so lost in her own fun, needing not entertainment from the other kids. Madeleine walked up to her as the little girl turned, looked up at her, “Good morning, you alright?”

“I am now.” And only for a moment, Madeleine wanted to pick her up, just hold her a minute and so she did, lifting the little girl to her hip without a fuss or fight from the child and began to walk away from the park, her pace increasing to a full sprint away.

-from [Of Dikes & Deities]

by Dontrell Lovet't

[When They Come] onHenri Cartier-Bresson's [Acapulco Market, 1963]

            They come, they go, but she stays and never goes.

Flocks of tourist descend upon the place she always called home and because she has always called this place home, there is nothing significant that she can place her finger on as to why anyone would love it so much. She looks to her right, apprehensively, with apprehensive eyes, clean bar and bottles, aware that with travel, comes travellers who want to blend their experience with a bit of drunken delirium, one-night stands, lingering nostalgia and hindsight, where all markets, girls at bars and regrets will never be to be no more.

            Henri Cartier-Bresson could have easily been one of those transients to the exotic unexplored becoming the exploited cliché destination, his photograph complicit, an aggravating accessory so beautifully displayed in immortality, still image of a woman who clearly has indifference to who comes, who goes, because she’ll never go to return.

[Mother & Child] on Diane Arbus's [Woman Carrying Child in Central Park]

[Mother & Child] On Diane Arbus's [Woman Carrying Child in Central Park]

          William Tammeus once quoted “You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around and why his parents will always wave back.” Diane Arbus captures this very image, the bond between mother and child, an indivisible, unbreakable bond, both indefinite and defying all definitions of both natural and social world.

 

          A child nestled in the arms of his mother falls directly into the social compact, the very few, infinite. We were born individually but we weren’t meant to live that way. There is a vast craving for the contact of another, for the love of another, of others, an unspeakable bond which becomes ample to explain all, leaving nothing unsaid even without anything having been said.

 

          The day is a gloomy one, or one advancing quickly, unstoppable into the evening, people are scattering or conglomerate in the backdrop, allowing the scenario to unfold, possessing character into sharp disbelief and what is left, what is stark, apparent and accurate, is an artistic ideal that obliterates everything, a shot of one woman who nourishes a child deep into a dream-world, keeps him safe while he’s dreaming, which nourishes a future, where all humanity finds continuum.

[From the Age of 5] on Dorothea Lange's [Damaged Child]

            Leo Tolstoy once wrote, “From the age of 5 to the man I am now, is but a step; from birth to the age of 5 is an appalling distance.” Every childhood can be said to be plagued by the length it takes to cross such appalling distances. Every adult can remember some point in time in their childhood where they first experienced danger, peril, a closing window or a grip suddenly slipping loose of its object, sending them into what might have seem the longest free-fall, the true lesson and introductory of physics.

            When a child receives love, a child receives all potential this world has to offer; when denied that love, they become another species manoeuvring off instinct to simply survive. Once survival becomes a child number one instinct, a return to a state of compassion or want of compassion is almost nil or an improbability; orphaned children usually don’t take to crying because they know it’s no point, it’s a waste of energy, and as for skills, they are honed over a long stretch of loneliness in a world that has taken from this, for some unfathomable reason, a family, so what they never find is a reason to care for anyone else beyond what they need and who they need to scuttle, to survive.

[Faceless; Chrysalis] on Amy Judd's [Mute Butterfly]

She's the woman nobody knows, the one who wonders why wandering amongst millions of people still leaves her without a face to be recognized.

Can there be a more-so double-edged resilient and frail existing things than the woman and the butterfly?

The original named given to a Butterfly was "Futterby," described almost inaccurate in the old English description, as a butterfly's stark colors, darling flight and becoming is of vast wonderment by everyone and everything that lays its  eyes upon it. Color brings dimension,offers an animate state, a zenith to serve as the platform in which to take flight. The woman, the reason humanity exist and why men have many times over waged wars over the rights of them, relentlessly evolves, socially and physiologically, lending to her stock, adding the buy-in to her heart an almost significant amount for the average man to ever accumulate; a greater difference; I've never figured a butterfly,its instincts notwithstanding,to ever feel the need for the natural world around it to validate its existence. It is against any laws of physics that may work against it, any form of modernism displacing its biome, its indication of Spring and a new year where all things bloom as beautifully as wayward flowers, the same bringing about repetition of evolution, events happening as anything inhabiting the earth, becoming disrupted by a new being not purposeful in its ability to usher in a pre-existing species into bondage, then soon after to an extinction not to the will and rights of its own self-destruction.

Will anyone ever know who this woman is? Will anyone ever inquire as to why no one knew before? Amy Judd only gives us the contours, replacing the physiognomy
with the variant visions we know nature never forfeits.

[Bodies Burning] a Poem

[Bodies Burning]

I love my body when in your arms of your body.

brand new is this sensation,

 memory intact, nerves ablaze.

Your body does what mine does not,

I love to wonder of its whys. Your vertebrae shivers, trembles to my

 coarse hands, or is it my tongue that has given you a chill?

I love to love the wonders and whys and what’s,

the slow shock of combustion lit by the short fuse of orgasm,

 electric currents in a sea of currents,

parting legs and crumbs of afterglow thrilling

 chills, chilling still your body

 which loves how I love it so anew

-from [The Paper Womb II]

Dontrell Lovet't

[It's All Over the News] a poem

It's all over the news,
the wire across the town,
you've a new lover

& if that be true,
the news on the wire,
on the town,
how much love have you've
given away to this new lover?

Life from you was paid
in blood from me;
in a youth so furious,
you reputedly could fatally impale
even the immortals;

I can only imagine what
this lover you're loving loves
of the sordid love you've
price-tagged;

he has no clue, what he's paid,
what he's paid for,
does he?


-from [If It Be You] by Dontrell Lovet't
photography by Laura Barbera

[The Shape of Reinvention] a poem

            This autonomous man has never undergone reinvention;

there’s never been a need so great to cause such an effect-

-manufacture is for the inane without self-invention,

the cripple of a soul needing some hindrance to project

the how and whys of declaring what should have been-

-nothing that has not been was suppose to be,

what has been was never suppose to be,

we make what has become and what will become,

we will make it as well-

nothing can occur naturally in the soil beneath our

feet; this is a man-made marvel,

standing as tall as the lowest structure

enduring time only by slight chance,

an orgasm by a precise measured fall from

the gallows,

an orifice of either-or differentiation-

-from [UnderStudies]

photography by Johnathan Jiang