I came to write this because I was heavily influenced as a kid by “Miami Vice”—wasn’t everyone? This particular scene stuck in my subconscious for years, and I never really thought about it again until I was helping a friend edit his history of Gonzalo Fernandez De Oviedo Y Valdes, a contemporary of Bartolome de las Casas’ in 15th c. West Indies. The image of the man murdered with his head in the toilet just made a huge impression on me, I guess, and it reminded me very much of the tortures that the conquistadores made upon the Native Americans in the New World.
—Kate Dusenbery
I. I realized I was suspended upside-down above a toilet, head just seconds from an imminent flush. My suspenders filled the bowl with the flour of my trade, a submersion in the cardiac attestation that this position was once centrally featured in an episode of Miami Vice. Throat-slit, blood purpling the powder below-reverse elimination, a bleeding of a brain, but no brain behind it. And then it occurred to me that this was a familiar position as de Las Casas noted Columbus hanging twelve indigenous men in memory of his Apostles from Columbia we came to disperse that particular particulate, mushroom cloud suffer it white little over Miami we rode that balloon as long as it took until the cartel took it back II. The mice the lice the six sided dice O Fortuna fish Ace in the Holiest of Holies Blubber Whomperhead, I haven't seen her. Did you see Oscar Santillanes? He was in here last night. Told a story about Veracruz. Something about dead fish washing up and putting their dicks in the sand. A circle of stars in the dust. There were horses running on the beach in the moonlight. Silver mercury stream droplets from waves ran by too. I saw it through your dream. I've never been there spend my life getting near. what about a car accident? said Oscar. it takes the responsibility out of living. happens all the time. A life evaporates water on the dash. a cat casts accusatory glances. forboding whiskers brush my nerves III. Yesterday I put my dick in you, today I hate you. And the funny thing is you can't figure it out. Don't you see, a used-up pussy is like a twice-chewed piece of meat. pink to begin with, then gray. Not to be blunt, but a cunt is a cunt is a cunt. Just this morning I painted my face in bold stripes of blue red purple a means to divide between the living and dead sides, a beaming mottled with blood a filament of a film of death negative of features cemented in the concrete circling the drain in the bathroom floor
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