Hysterical Women

Ellen Clayton

Once the small talk is done
we settle into our closeness and
The truth begins to
spill
from our mouths 

We talk of the anxiety.
We all feel it but
it manifests in a myriad of ways
For some it gnaws away
in the pit of the stomach
A physical pain that prevents us
being functioning adults; working 

For others it is a panic attack
Waking in the night with fear clawing at her throat
An inability to catch a breath
Chest full of angry wings beating beating beating

For still others it’s more low lying
A constant feeling of dread:
a rising fear in our body that we
Control by keeping our worlds small;
we don’t try new experiences or
Explore different places

Has this affliction always been present in women?
In bygone days would we be diagnosed with hysteria -
Treated in unspeakable ways to be cured of our feminine disease?

Perhaps it’s this age of social media which has exploited our fragile mental health
The constant comparison stealing our joy-

always striving for absolute unattainable perfection,
We bought into a myth of having it all and
Are burdened by
incessant pressure to do more and be better;
to achieve career success and fix the world and save the planet and
free the oppressed and keep
our homes clean, we mustn’t fuck up our children either and of course we should do yoga and
meditation daily, recycle and reuse,
eat plant-based foods and take classes to learn something new and
read books and express
ourselves creatively and I could carry on if you want, except
I can’t breath.

First published in Corporeal (Sept 7, 2021)

Hysterical Women

Body of Work

I am reading.
            Voraciously. Ferociously. With careless disregard for starting one book and finishing
another. Or finishing at all. It is liberating to start something and leave it hanging. Pages
unturned, unread, unlearned. It feels wrong, disrespectful somehow, for hours toiled and
sweat spent. But I am unapologetic. I am scanning, searching, looking for clues. Finding my
cue. Where do I come in? When is it my turn? How can I make my dent? On this body of
work. My body of work. My hard-worn, muscle-torn, un-blessed body of hurt. 

            Sentences collide, chase each other’s tails and collapse upon another like rutting
lovers. Heave-ho, mind how you go. Mind your racks, paperbacks. I caress spines, invent
bylines and bios and sycophantic blurb. Yet I am. What’s the word? Dyspeptic. I have been
chewing on these fictions for too long. I am bloated with paragraphs and characters. I need to
spit them out, start again. Detox myself. Get back to basics. Back to black on white. Lines
written in darkness upon my body. I awake to a new chapter each morning light. 

            This body of words woos and wounds me. Hurts and heals in equal measure.Summons pain and pleasure. Conjures treasures from the deep, and a prick of struggle and
strain. When all is said, blood is spilt, and sheets are stained. When all is written out, laidbare, unhidden, exposed. Unbidden maybe. Unburdening undoubtedly. Unhitching the words
that I carry with me. Lying dusty in the bottom of pockets. Waiting silently to see the light. To
breathe the air again. Let loose. Be set free.
And me with them.

I am breathing.
            This body of work, my body at work, is a constant fluxing, fucking movable feast.I hunger for the taste of my own flesh, the meagre meat on my bones. I want to carve it into
shape, into a new dimension, into apparition. I need to feel real and corporeal, invisible and
translucent,  present and omnipotent all at once. I write myself into being. Into breathing.These words conjure worlds as they conjugate myself. My Self. Id, Ego and in-between. I am
all between. I am work in progress. I am body at work. This body of words.

Body Of Work

Joshua Morley reads A By & A Void and Dysphoria Andromeda as published in Corporeal Magazine November, 2021


A Boy & A Void

Now, now, I give myself, molten iron to the cast
Cast being air incongruous—mist, flora, cuticle, the ether . . ..
Bone, incandescent first. Then, solute in blood.

In this barbarous light, I manage boyhood,
absoluteness. I abide in that phantom cavity provided me.
My lungs, yielding, understand that ribs are an agreed elastic limit.

Under this arduously motherly light, you, the moon, provide my form
definition. Definition I never asked for. I never asked, I never asked
for nurture. Your nurture is torture. Your nurture borders me.

& it is your abasement, your lust for intrinsic luminance,
your low-esteem, your elevated privilege, that
gives you pass to boast your refulgence.

Trust, I do not care, do not need braggart. Really, I do not need it.
So please, take back your light. Reflectivity is millstone enough and I
do not care for astrology, do not care for realisms.

Yet the night remembers me, remembers my margins,
caresses me with cold & gnarly fingers, twists and flexes 
its scarce light, amplified in this dark hue about me.

And my head seats the course for the chase, some impalpable field
behind my eyes. When I close them, I find they are your portal in. 
It is a viscous darkness behind my ocular curtains.

And in this light—in the lack of it—I wear a boundless nakedness,
a fictile plasticity, but there is no cast, for I do not see it.
In this moment of infiniteness, I catch respite,

however fickle, for with entry you always leave souvenirs,
visual remnants that now coalesce into my own personal
haunting. A facsimile of your light, a reminder to conform . . ..

So, in the light of being masculine, in light of bragging
being a thing you would do—the irony of you nagging me with motherly light—
I should tell you that, even in this light, I am complete. In this light I—




Dysphoria Andromeda


Your body is a trap that always
finds you, a galaxy your
consciousness is established in
to be lost. You do not recognise
the house you find yourself.

(Perseus is the monster 
he saves you from)

& serenity is an oh-so surreal
picture you have painted yourself,
idyll, that you look forward to.
But the touchstone for anomaly
is a tangible disparity.

(you call an alien energy soul
you call a foreign galaxy home)

Your soul is bound on a leash
your body never lets go.
you stretch out, & the band
snaps right back. With a pang,
you go back into you.

(stars blink out, collapse. you
watch black holes form)

But there are higher heavens
you can climb. Celestially
confined, you go as a dream
not margined. You escape yourself
Your body is emptied perpetually . . .


(but nuclear energy is no energy 
when the galaxy is foreign)

A Boy & A Void And Dysphoria Andromeda

The Only Way to Travel by Grace LaPointe

Grace Lapointe is a writer from Massachusetts with cerebral palsy. She has been a regular contributor to Book Riot since January 2018. She has published fiction in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Deaf Poets Society, and Kaleidoscope and poetry and essays in Wordgathering. Her work--including undergraduate work--is cited in books and dissertations and taught in high school and college courses.

The Only Way to Travel

thoracic vertebrae
wisps of thin skunky smoke curl under the glare of a floodlight
dappled by mothwings                  my back is comprised of several
thousand rubber bands stretched to thin strings                i was never good
at putting distance between my head and shoulders              i tear
like holes in the thighs of my new jeans
[please lord, it is not my choice to exist in a body.]
pink and black and blue and welts           i saw it all nineteen years ago
through tear-soaked visions of warm chandelier light           july can be
cruel but august is brutal            i just didn’t think it would take this long
bloated lungs straining ribs                  with each pop running further
from the shrapnel
[if i could i would have my spine pulled out like a butter
poached lobster from its shell.]
my mother climbs an a-frame ladder               (i ache to slouch so much
it hurts to slouch)               raven-symoné playing through scrambled
radio disney            in front of a box fan in a light street doorway
thoughts of making it to thirty wane               expiring like afternoons
spent watching tissue paper and burnt orange paint stacked over and
over themselves in neat piles

Thoracic Vertebrae

perideipnon
i no longer curl inward on myself              i’m honey glazed and hate
the sound of broken glass            crunching snow and ice footsteps
across the quad                  i no longer wish for death by fire
the vault is lovely dark and deep              i scour the floor with
frantic hands searching for escape hatches                 divots under
spread fingertips             gaussian blurred light aberrations
split to double then quadruple vision              everything is
chrome in the future
[all i remember from history that morning was the flash in
which my classmate bolted.]
under the winding sheets as camphor sinks in           retired h-named
hurricanes dredge everything i own                 calling home telephone
numbers that probably don’t exist anymore                distant relics
chiming gently in the background of catered dinner parties
[maybe if i lay outside in the stream it will wash me away
when it rains later.]

Perideipnon

odd fellows cemetery
my body is a bumper car                        in that i am
destined to crash               like racing steam trains into
ghost towns in the mountains              yearning to run not
walk into the smoky ether
[right before the floor drops out there’s this part where
the room is engulfed in flames and i don’t remember a bit
of it after that but it’s been fifteen years since i went on a
thrill ride and i’m still overcome by that vertigo twice a
week at least. back then i couldn’t scream loud enough
but i lost my voice that day and i think it’s still
somewhere in that shaft.]
anthracite mines burn in my hollows                deep dark
space that can’t help but breathe              preferring to smother
instead                        still kept aflame by just a thread
of continued breath                                     tunneling beneath me
[it seemed ok on the surface but below the lithosphere
there is always something lying in wait. i can bet on it.]

Odd Fellows Cemetery

he never married
here lies my body in the depth of your irises                            twin casualties
between the sheets of a mattress on the floor                              supple
lips and front teeth parted by sinner tongues now well-versed
in the futility of virtue
[i used to drink kriek lambic alone in my underwear on a
blue brocade sofa with the thought of you between my
quivering thighs, staring up at me like i am the deity of
high altars while i tell you how beautiful you look in red
and green.]
lay down your sword and my dagger                     we melt into pooling
holy sugar glazing sternums and jawlines alike                           crack open
like earth under pressure                      pointer fingers tracing patterns
like skyscrapers in the tyrian purple shadows on my back

He Never Married

Tenterhooks by JP Seabright


In/

fantalising          hermaphrodites

           with  cockandboobscum

between          my          breasts

              body trussed & basted

smeared      in         the      juices

           of my own consolations

horny          as         a        fucking

                 hornet buzzing with

effervescing             confessions

   fingering myself into infinity

kicking          &         screaming

           into the soft limp pillow

of            my          gender-bent

                                         body



Out/ 

damn        kut          i say           hell 

              is murky queerly dirty 

exploring          my          garden 

                     of earthy delights 

hieronymus              anonymous 

        sticky fingers in both pies 

sliding   betwink     the    cracks

      (that’s how the bite gets in)

tantalising         &        tenderised 

                         a piece of meat 

vandalised      beyond     belief

              hungup & strungup &

fuckedup    on      your    tenter

                                        hooks

