Press the play button above to watch my short film “it’s my birthday, too, yeah!” (1:10)

Fugu-Flaker

The days whir and zone by—fast as light—light / dark, light / dark, light / dark (so mournfully dark), light/ dark, light … you see. The end of a month is here before you know it. Month / month / month / month … and here we are at the end of another year that has clamored by. Where did it go? When did that happen? Another year shot. So she places a gravid tambor in the freezer—she is known as the Puffer Fish Queen: a fugu-flaker, fast scene maker. She is trim and gelid. Chromium spangled, angular, sharp-edged taker of the fringe. Bleak is the channel of quiver / meek is the trammel of pain. Bring me bowers of mbu puffers. Saxitoxin. Call often. “Thee talent of ‘Mangacious!’” Towers of tetrodotoxin. Please, call often! Please, please, please call her with the edge of her cleaver—into actions she abhors. To the indiscriminate tang of desire. She’s paid her penance for the hour. Another anniversary of her birth come and gone. She gets on with her life.

“…the little candles poke
holes in the blackness.

A time to eat fat
and oil, a time to gamble
for pennies and gambol”

— Marge Piercy / “Season of Skinny Candles”