jamesongillihan

[jamesongillihan]

"Infested," from lumière issue 8, spring 2023.

The whole place is infested. He sees it in the walls, in the ruts of the windows, on the ceiling: squirming black-brown clumps of cockroach dripping from the seams. He sees it every day, unlocking the door, kneeing his way past the courtyard cat always following him. He closes the door behind him and flips the lightswitch. Huddled inside the lights, insect silhouettes dapple the dirty carpet like sunlight through leaves. Lex locks the door. He thinks nothing of it. He settles in for the evening, has dinner early, imagines smashing one of the insects crawling up the bathroom sink as he brushes his teeth that night. Two come to join it. Lex sets his palms on the edge of the sink, looking at them. Lex lives alone, so he’s always the first one up. He gets to turn on the lights, again, and watch the shadows scurry away (again). He gets to open the silverware drawers and see the bugs run across the spoons and the forks and the knives. He gets to reach inside the cabinets, pick out cereal boxes covered in droppings and grime, pour out a bowl and rinse off a spoon and eat breakfast underneath the roach lights. He’s stopped trying to kill them. Why bother? He pulls on a jacket and goes to work. Who cares. Lex doesn’t get to care. It’s an apartment, he thinks. He’s going to be out of here in a year, right? One year. So it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t bother. Who cares. And anyway, he thinks, he can’t solve a complex-wide roach infestation. Right? He’s got neighbors, the roaches have neighbors. He’ll put poison out, some’ll die, some will retreat up a floor and down a floor and in vents from one side of the building to the other, and they’ll fuck until they’re overflowing again, spilling out of the lights and the cabinets and the silverware drawer. And then, in a year, Lex will move. Who cares? So he doesn’t do anything. Gets home, turns the lights on, hangs his coat up, watches the roaches shuffle inside the ceiling lights. He has dinner early and brushes his teeth and goes to bed.

[jamesongillihan]

"Eating Out," from Sink Hollow issue 18, fall 2024.

I must be the loudest chewer on the planet. Here’s me: spit-spotted jowls, gum-juice leaking out the lipseams, smacking, mouth breathing, gingivitising the air. Can I share this room with you? Is there air in here for two. Can I drool over your shoulder rest my teeth on your collar, dig in or should I serve you tender, kiss gristle in your mouth and tongue your insides clean. Cheekchewed molar-marked mucosa: We’ll have matching scars. Cannibal love is so played out I know but I’m sick of taking risks and ready to lose my body—cliché, chlamydia, prion disease—I’ll take them all into me, learn new words for the parts of the mouth (your retromolar trigone, your maxillary alveolar ridge, your    superior           lip),     take up dentistry, start filling cavities. Or I could go fuck myself. It’s just I need a you in me in you again, someone else’s spit in my mouth for a change, tasting sucking gagging, recursing, regurgitating me back into me. Teach me who I am again, teach me how I taste. How to eat someone alive. How to sit still while being eaten. Or pinch my clit between your teeth and bite me sexless, pucker your lips, roll me over that tongue of yours, roleplay sommelier. Say something smart about me: say notes of sin and citrus, say you’d taste me over and over again if it didn’t mean using me up. Say didn’t your mother ever teach you to chew with your mouth closed.

[jamesongillihan]

"Transgender Narcissus Can't Stand Mirrors," from Sink Hollow issue 18, fall 2024.

—or springs, or puddles, or his reflection in the droplets on grass stalks and petals, but he’s fixated, anyway, on the minutia of himself, the angle at which his eyelashes curl, the quality of oil in his pores, the fat deposits rounding his cheeks, shit both imbecilic and important. He thinks a lot of himself, except for when he doesn’t, and when he doesn’t, it’s usually because he’s incapable— asleep or dead or dying— he lacks everything but body: flower stem spine, blond[e] corona, stretched-skin leather-silk petals. Inside he finds just more bod[ies]: ovaries and ova. He tries to concede something there essential in himself. What are you doing, Narcissus? You lean over the water’s edge and watch yourself get thinner. —or springs, or puddles, or his reflection in the droplets on grass stalks and petals, but he’s fixated, anyway, on the minutia of himself, the angle at which his eyelashes curl, the quality of oil in his pores, the fat deposits rounding his cheeks, shit both imbecilic and important. He thinks a lot of himself, except for when he doesn’t, and when he doesn’t, it’s usually because he’s incapable— asleep or dead or dying— he lacks everything but body: flower stem spine, blond[e] corona, stretched-skin leather-silk petals. Inside he finds just more bod[ies]: ovaries and ova. He tries to concede something there essential in himself. What are you doing, Narcissus? You lean over the water’s edge and watch yourself get thinner.

[jamesongillihan]

"Butterscotch," from Rushlight 2024 issue.

[jamesongillihan]

The Vivisection

When I met the doctor, thinking nothing wrong, He promptly diagnosed me. There was something wrong. Let me feel your heartbeat, he said, let me hear its hum— Recognize the reticent resounding of its drum— Shouldn’t it seem stronger? Shouldn’t we hear more? Are you unfamiliar with the rhythm of your core? I have the solution. Put your trust in me; Correct your constitution and you’ll be who you should be. Well, harm me handsome, doctor. Make me work like new. Help my heart to do the things the heart is here to do. I signed the consent form. He wasted not a beat and set a surgeon’s date night with the heart he hoped to meet. Feeling all aflutter, I anesthetized myself and woke up bruised and bloody on the path to perfect health. I received instructions from the doctor for my care. I made no deductions of the doctor or his care. He wrote I may manifest some pulse- or piercing pain, that healing’s halfway mental, that something in the brain would have to intertwine the old nerves in between the new— through this agonizing process, my heart would be debuted. Time passes so slowly. I couldn’t wait. I had been so wholly impatient. I couldn’t take it. I needed pain. I needed to know this all wasn’t in vain. Invested in this injury as proof that I had changed, I dressed in scrubs and surgeon’s gloves to operate again. Sharpening my scalpel, I carved into my chest, I opened, operating, I was bleeding, I was bled— The wound unfolded freely, the blade I barely felt;­­ The place he’d cut to cure me was the place I cut myself. Perhaps this was my treatment. Perhaps I’m built for pain. Perhaps what hurt me once gave me the means to hurt again. Now I was left wanting. I spindled strands of vein to part the chains imprisoning the precious flesh he’d saved; Squeezing fists of viscera, I squinted to compare this body with the one I’d been before the doctor’s care. Would I know the difference? What was there to find behind the ribs I pried apart to witness his design? I grasped it in my fingers. I pulled it from my chest and freed the famished muscle from my penitential breast. Rich and ripe for harvest, ravenous and raw, the organ oozing in my grip hitched wide its dripping maw. I recognized it readily. This heart— It was wrong. This heart I knew at once though I had never known my own— This heart—­­­­ It hungered. This heart beheld a feast. In my palm pulsed the surgeon’s heart— Finally released.

from Rushlight 2024 issue.

[jamesongillihan]

"Rain in Massachusetts," from lumière issue 9, 2024.

Rain in Massachusetts

Raining hard today, raining like one solid sheet of cloudgut falling continuously, like sludging across campus through four inch puddles, like the difference between having and forgetting your umbrella is whether you’re soaked through in fifteen seconds or fifty— Raining like might as well not go anywhere, might as well sit on the stones rainwater is carving into chasms, running from rock to stream, dip my feet legs thighs waist and sink into the rising water

[jamesongillihan]

"Losing (Lost)," from lumière issue 8, spring 2023.

Lost the ticket (only ticket) on the way out, hand in pocket, fumbling, (crumpling,) flexing one corner to the other (never creasing). Always something in that pocket: lint, a pen, a lighter (through the wash, broken), a cough drop (melted, stuck), a ticket, lettering faded (sweat and friction). The key to never losing things is never moving them – so everything lived in that dirty jean pocket, getting sticky with sugar and menthol and aspartame chewing gum. The ticket (crumpled) (faded) lived there too, fingers on it, taking attendance. When was it lost? (When did I lose it?) Turned out pockets too late, mostly empty (always dirt and a wrapper and that little broken lighter). Fingers had no answers: must have wandered off – must have rubbed into dust in all that time we spent fidgeting. Stolen? Maybe, you know how the city gets, all thieves and pickpockets (dirty) (desperate) (broke), mid-crowd shuffling reaching hands – they touched me – saw the ticket (mine) for a wallet (mine) and took it. Sure, maybe, or maybe I took it (careful), held it (careful), inspected it, insistent, needing to know: Where am I going? Nowhere now. Home, now, empty pockets, dirty jeans, heart beating, lighter leaking fluid where it fell.

[jamesongillihan]

"Wound Care," from lumière issue 7, spring 2022.

Wound Care

You see it everywhere, as soon as you look up aftercare: Your new tattoo is an open wound. This is not the language they use for surgery– No wounds, no cuts you can’t heal– They send me home with a pound less flesh, and a pound more paper, all concise and clinical. My instructions are a series of Nos: No picking. No scratching. No sunlight. No ibuprofen. Only one of them prescribes me an opioid. Fine. I drape my leg over the sanitized armrest, close my eyes, and breathe through the pain. But the cleaning– –the wound care– –the wound– I’m scared when the nurse unwraps my surgical vest, and I’m scared when she cuts the styrofoam from my skin, and I’m scared when she tells me what beautiful work he’s done; I’m scared when he sends me home gauze and bandage bulging, and then I don’t get to be scared anymore, I’m home, and there’s nothing left but wound care. So I listen to what my [artist|surgeon] tells me: Don’t scrub. Don’t let the [wound|stitch] face the stream. [Run soap and water over your hands| Squeeze a cloth over your collarbone,] let the water fall down your body, and pat dry. Rubbing soap between my palms, and suds between my fingertips, I peel away the edges of my bandages: Dermis deep ink weeping black fluid down the drain. Cherry chisel tracks red heat radiating under my ribs. My body takes an unfamiliar shape underneath my shirt, freshly sculpted and swollen. I press a drop of ointment between my fingers and rub it over the wound, [ink in intention|carving in scarlet], body of canvas and clay.