Fine-Tuned Fetus Brain

let’s narrativize the rashomon way

where in the first version bella is skinning

a rabbit and watching the price is right.

in an alternate, sister bella is new

at the convent, tasked with lighting

hundreds of altar candles,

then tuning the organ player.

in another, bella assists the gravedigger’s odd

practice of placing mardi gras beads upon

headstones he crushed on in grade school.

in the final version, bella hosts a twitch

stream that reacts to the royal ascot.

there’s foie gras, perrier—fit checks in minimal 

burgundy tweed to offset dark academia 

tuition costs: stained glass, ribbed vaults. 

there’s a healthy amount of kink

shaming; sugar water licked 

from fingers. i am the rabbit. 

i self-generate nightly until flushed pink. 

pleasuring her embryonic 

sense of time & space—

from spacex launch to helen’s egg.

feudal lords of silicone valley.

god, i calculate you’re ashamed 

of my exploits & titanic merriment, 

unimpressed with aurora borealis—

all astronomical events for that matter. 

bella’s goodreads will provide motive: 

baudelaire and rimbaud live 

next door bingeing french new wave,

& keats’s letters. acid-rotting corpses seep 

through thin walls. 

it is artichoke season in france,

which always gets them in a mood—

bookish dark, violet de provence—

to infiltrate the hedge maze 

that is our exclusive friend group. 

so, bella roles basic english department girlie 

(homicidal plagiarizer) with a manual typewriter, 

each period hammered in like a railroad spike. 

this is progress. this is enlightenment. 

bella is a woman in stem! 

bella is beyond mortal coil.

i come up with the show tunes

to escape the vermin, bed bugs, gothic 

cathedrals neighboring. i direct bella to spread 

the ashes of this writer’s feud

in a walnut-paneled library, books red 

as candy apples when a voice interrupts 

with all god-given authority: 

trouble finds bella (yikes),

or i won a trip to switzerland. 

it’s up in the air. what is god’s plan? 

bella’s upstaged your unlimited supply 

of one-hit wonders with morbid curiosity.

lychee martinis, eyes in formaldehyde. 

specimen x takes the worst scenic photographs 

of bella. specimen x distracts her so. 

the distraction stays & stays, 

lingers like stench in a vent; 

it lingers like pregnancy.