Giannina Braschi - Yo-Yo Boing!

She starts on all fours crawling like a child, but she is a wild animal with a great big trunk, an elephant. And little by little, her neck starts popping, and little by little, her neck starts growing, one inch, then two inches, then five inches, until her head inches its way so far up that she’d almost swear it hits the ceiling, she’d almost swear it has grown so big and so fast that it can’t fit inside the house anymore. And then it dawns on her that what has grown is not her head but her neck, which means that she must be a giraffe. Then she starts hunching over, the bones in her hands and feet start crackling, there is a rumbling throughout her body, bombs exploding, fireworks, thunder, lightning, throbbing, and she tries in vain to allay the uprising. She feels like spreading her cheeks like a ham and cheese sandwich, opening wide, releasing that other part of her body inside, those brown pebbles which are sometimes pleasant and sometimes prolonged, which are sometimes nearly melted inside and out, which are big and round and green, which are her pets, her poohs, her lil’ poopsie-woopsies, and the yellow waters melting and plunging with them into the bowl, smelling of that other smell, violently sour, enticingly foul like budding buds and violets. She wanted to feel the cascade of her black blood, her body’s dead blood, and she wanted to bathe in all of the blood of the death of her youth. She felt the urge to sit on the throne, to squat and pull down her pantyhose, which doubled as a girdle, and then her panties, which were so tight she could barely breathe. She wanted to breathe freely, unfasten her bra, scratch and stroke her itching breasts, fondle her nipples in front of the mirror, turn sideways to see her nose looking hooked and humped like a scorpion, a hairy spider, she wanted to become the hairy spider she was and scratch the itch like she was picking a berry, one of those pimples that look like a pox, and see the blood spurt and suck it like a vampire, then burrow into her crotch where the hairy waves tangle into curly knots and see the layer of crust and smell the sweet smell of coffee skim, sugar crust, and sleep on one of her blisters and milk its frothy clear nectar and feel the endless pleasure of it bursting and explore all her little nooks and crannies until she was empty, hollow, and broken. She noticed a little scab on her knee. The top was dry. She could either yank it off and let it bleed or peel it back like a Band-Aid and see another layer of skin under the first, not tanned, but musty and pink. First she acted like she wasn’t interested, then started tracing its outline, caressing, charming, and wooing it with her fingertips, rousing a vibration, a rich metallic sound, and it looked like it wanted to leave the knee for the hand that played it like a guitar, yes, they made music together, drew blood, yellow waters, it started reaching out to the hand, unraveling itself from the knee while the fingertips seduced it, the nails flayed it off the kneecap, and though the scab was uprooted, bloody, and sore, it posed like the beloved maiden in the palm of her hand where it was caressed again, adored by her eyes, yearned by her saliva, suckled by her tongue, momentarily teased by her lightning desire. After having sucked and nibbled and kneaded it, she spit it out, stepped on it with her big toe, then picked it up and flicked it in the sink. She

turned on the faucet and flushed it down the drain. Detached from her roots and whims, she restlessly searched for another star, another match to light a fire under her kettle of yearnings, a concrete, objective goal, a grain of sand to roll between her fingertips, a warm bread crumb where she could stop to think for a moment or sleep in the tenderness of what she touches. In doing so, somewhat obsessively, her breathing began to sound like the breathing of a wary animal, and its caution, deliberately slow and deep, began to sound like the breathing of a surgeon about to make the first incision. She gently placed the bloody wound in her mouth, the blister’s sheath in her mouth, and played with all the different textures she found on her body — the snot and crud from her eyes were her dolls and toys — and she played hide-and-seek and stuck them to different parts of her body like a stamp collector, all while listening to slow and deliberate music, while feeling some deep desire to push out, to breathe in, to breathe out, in and out, in and out. There she was excavating a cave with the knuckles of her forefingers pressing against a hole, when slowly out wriggled the profile of a white worm. She pressed her knuckles harder against the irritated skin once more, twice more until a blackhead emerged. Nice start, but there was much more lava bubbling inside. Another squeeze, a little pus and blood, the volcano erupting, but it wasn’t the blood she was after, no, blood alone wouldn’t do it, all the pus had to be drained, the pollen, the whole worm had to come out, alive and kicking. The first attempt was too abrupt. She had to steady the squeeze, hold the pressure, smother the little hole, suffocate it, bust it open, spread it wide, leave it empty — empty of water, thorn, and blood — shiny and clean. Having spread its legs, it was cornered and kicking on one side of the pore where it defended its cavern which was attacked from all sides by cannons and rifles, but the more it was attacked, the more it resisted, burrowing deeper and deeper into the walls of the pore, showing no sign it would ever surrender or accept defeat. It had become part of her flesh, it had lived in plenty of other pores around the wings of her nostrils and had sealed them all with blackheads, but it was only here, in this little hole, that it had felt at home — yes, it was a cave-dwelling nomad, but right here, in this little hole, it had settled down, incognito. It had tried to keep a low profile, having learned its lesson from other places, having been ousted for wanting to shine, bright and sunny, for pretending to be a thorn, for being light, but now it was hiding its crest, hiding its misery, its bitterness. At first she thought it was a mole until she noticed the edge, the crest, and squeezed it furiously because she had been fooled. She wet the open pore with some water. This time it won’t get away. She would force it out against its will with her firm and steady fists. It would have to come out with its hands up; it would have to surrender its wounds, bulges, bags, and all its goods. And so it did. Out came its neck, then its hands, its legs, the belly was enormous, gigantic, it was perfect, plackity, plackity, plack, plack, plack, that’s how it emerged and surrendered itself whole, looking shiny and greasy on the swollen tip of her nose. There it was, bug-eyed and nosy, probably trying to snoop on the blackhead, it puffed itself up, it looked like a fly, yes, like a fly about to fly. It crawled around the circumference of the dimple like a tick, and ate meat, and was swarmed by ants, speckles of freckles, as we all know — wherever you find meat, you find pesky critters. She looked closer, oh, yes, it’s you, a queer bug, queer indeed. How d’ya pick it up? She

loosened it with her finger. It danced on her fingertip like a cricket or a grasshopper, zigzagging, wigwagging its tail-end, zaggling, waggling like a piece of wire, like a piece of white string, acting out its joie de vivre, its lust for life. As she paused upon her captive, her mouth began to water. It was her tongue rather than her teeth or lips that wanted it most. And what for? To pass it along so that the palate could taste the pleasure of taking a guest and keeping it captive, and then after napping on the silver bed of a molar for a second, or a few days, why not tease it some more, start a riot, make a funny face, or have an orgy, sure, why not get it rip-roaring drunk and then make it vanish.