Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology, Issue 1, can be read in full at the above link. Each individual contribution will be shared here as well, one every week.
Clipped
By Andi Chatburn
I never would have believed
I would delight in being the whore,
the woman with seven lovers
spanning the rainbow.
Or that with an orgasm
I could birth a star,
becoming a mother of millions,
when I have no human offspring.
I never would have believed there are
still ceremonies
where holy bodies come to worship
other holy bodies.
I am a pilgrim at these
Temples full of delicious devouring,
consuming,
feeding and being fed.
Is there anything more intimate
than eating one another?
That is what Turkey whispered to me
three Novembers ago,
my arms engulfing her body,
preventing powerful wings
from shattering in one final dying clap.
Her scaley blue feet wrapped,
suspended by jute from a tree,
like shibari.
We took deep breaths together,
Turkey and me,
her blood pooling into the woodchips,
nourishing next year’s growth.
My blood caught in cotton,
she warmed my snowy blue fingers in
the downy layers of her breast.
It took all of my strength to restrain her.
But who was restraining me?
Whose arms were around my wings?
They were clipped decades ago
at Summer camp,
the moment I sputtered
that I saw God in a dying Seagull
on the rocky shores of Lake Charlevoix.
They clipped them, then
I clipped them again for good measure.
They told me, without ever really telling me,
that I can’t really fly,
and seeing God isn’t something that happens
anymore.
It was the way they looked at me,
holding me at arm’s length
with pity and fear
for my future.
But even then, I could see a glint of their holy envy.
I was more careful who I shared with
(almost no one), and even then,
I restrained myself,
clipped and small,
believing what they said about flying.
Until one day, in the snowy deserts
of Anza Borrego in a canyon filled
with a thousand glorious rainbows
as Cougar Creek rose and roared,
I danced with Raven and
a giant lactating bat wearing purple lipstick.
Andi is a queer bioethicist and hospice and palliative care physician living in San Francisco, California, in a courtyard of River Birch and Black-capped chickadee, where they all long for the River. She is a PhD student studying philosophy with an emphasis on Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion at California Institute of Integral Studies where she is exploring the ways embodied pleasure holds space for grief in this time of systems collapse.
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