HECUBA as per Machine as per inner thigh

HECUBA as per Machine as per inner thigh tension

Fadwa Ahmed

My name is Hecuba. I am the intersection of your mirror and the grief you are keeping as your pet. I live in the point where they meet and evaporate. Everything is a pore THIS IS YOUR OWN ABYSS YOUR VERY OWN / BOTTOMLESS PIT THIS IS YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY no one ever tries to see what I am like when I am liquid. I am vapor raining in an inside-out jar and I look just like your dead father SEE ME SCREAMING IN THE HINGES OF / YOUR DOORWALL COME HERE BABY ANYTHING / YOU WANT YES I can be anything you want BABY as long as you’re only holding a little right under your belly button I’ll be your sewing machine. I was the wall of a pipe whose sealant has worn off and you’ll stop breathing when I’m not anymore HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY COME ON BABY / I KNOW YOU’RE BARKING SO MUCH LOUDER THAN THIS for what? For me? You shouldn’t have. Hamlet’s faking his miscarriage, again, crying for his father’s death. His heaving is the only thing keeping me alive filling my glass veins with vapor blood. When I am not alive, his heaving will continue, replace some replacement of me with my vapor blood. His consonants are full of air and nothing at the top of the mouth, again. That’s my cue. If I don’t pave this stage he won’t have any cracks to fall into.

THE LIMBS ARE MIXED WITH CEMENT AND

BLOOD / SWALL’WING GLASS TO PROVE A POINT

TO TEAR DUCTS / THE FIRE IS GENTLE THE

BRIDGE’S BONES RETURN / TO THE COMBUSTION

OF THEIR BLOATED BEGINNINGS /

LET ME TELL YOU HOW THIS ENDS

WITH ZOLOFT / PART’CLES CRUSTING HORATIO’S

BROKEN NOSE / HIS SULCI SEALED ONCE

AND HIS MOLAR PITS / TWICE

You inhale nothing in a

conference room not dim

you can’t move your fingers to

steal Baby time is not nothing except in

my mouth, other people Baby only moves

when breath ripples glass Baby

I’d hide you in my saran-wrap

heart but you can only hide

things in cubes Baby

Enter THE SENATE.

Hecuba tries to kneel but cannot because she has no knees

I see you from the bottom of the ocean / but choose to not. I run my fingers down / the scales of fish and relish my disgust. / Call my name in vain again I / was never listening I’m only / in my head and my head isn’t on / any dollar bills yet

This piece reads/writes/reflects with Heiner Muller’s Hamletmachine (1977).