Blake Butler - Scorch Atlas

— UP is on no compass. DOWN I’d have to learn to disregard.

FURTHER

— I slip a sheet of self under my tongue and taste tar. I can no longer see my mother. I climb to a clearing. She’s still right there, her bloated body continental — eyes a hundred evenings wide — her voice— Remember the sky that morning? The way it cracked up as an egg? The foam gushing out of everywhere: the gutters, the children’s eye holes, the broken backbone of the sea? Her rhythm pummels through me, moistening my brain with ugly dew. Yes, come back down , she snores into my stomach. The blood piddles and divides. Come back and all will be well. We will learn. Behind those oceanic eyes, though, such burn. Such unclear terror, laced with sting. I feel her weather. Fan her faint. I feel her finger in my knee. My one, I swear, I promise, please … I turn and continue higher. I climb until the land is covered under curdle. Until I can’t hear her singing and my head is full of pop. The air around me in a bonnet. The strum inside me strung with color. No nothing but a gleam. I could wrap my arms around it — I could breathe it in — I did.

— Some morning I will wake up. Come morning I’ll wake up and. And the summer in my elbows. Sun at my elbows, stuttered open. Some morning I will stand up and the floor will swish beneath my feet. My new feet, bruised and washed white. White I wouldn’t recognize, imagine. Imagine home. Some homecoming. I will move into those lost rooms, wet and depthless, and I will sit against the wall. I’ll sit with the wall and watch the years unwrap a second span. My head. My lips unwrapped and chapped wide open. My colors spilling lather in the reek. Somewhere sandwiched solid something. Zeroes. Greased. Goodnight. Hello.

Thank you more than thanking to my parents, L.D. and Barbara, two unmatchables, without whom…

Thank you to my sister, Morgan, who knows, and to Justin.

Thank you to Heather for the time, and for our air.

Thank you to Zach and Jonathan for being, and believing.

Thank you to Michael Kimball, Keith Montesano, Ryan Call, for the wise eyes.

Thank you to Derek White, Robert Lopez, and Peter Markus, each a brother.

Thank you to Jesse Ball and Ken Sparling.

Thank you to Ken Baumann, Sean Kilpatrick, Mike Young, Sam Pink, Gene Morgan, Shane Jones, Jamie Iredell, Matthew Simmons, Lily Hoang, Chris Higgs, Justin Taylor, and Adam Robinson.

Thank you to a lot of other people also, whose names could fill another book.

Blake Butler is the author of the novella EVER (Calamari Press). He edits ‘the internet literature magazine blog of the future’ HTML Giant, as well as two journals of innovative text: Lamination Colony , and concurrently with co-editor Ken Baumann, No Colony . His other writing has appeared in The Believer, Unsaid, Fence, Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2009 , as well as shortlisted in Best American Nonrequired Reading and widely online and in print. He lives in Atlanta, and blogs at gillesdeleuzecommittedsuicideandsowilldrphil.com.