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Genelle Chaconas

Skin Deep


            Surface deep is skin deep, but what alien ripples could churn from below.

            Someday, the day you forget to expect it, you’ll lift your head from the hangover sink and there it will be; a flux in your appearance, a vision washed up on the delirium beach.

            You’ve grown a mole, not a Monroe beauty spot, but a brown mass. Someone would point and say it looks like Detroit. A lock of hair swept across the forehead glows the violet luster of a cockroach. Spider-web wrinkles reach like tree roots to the hairline. Your teeth are bloodied, cracked in an amnesia bar fight. A scratch left your right eye a milky yellow.

            Deeper, your pores sprout whiskers, lax skin flaps nurse grease. Fifth grade hygiene videos project through your mind. Sally cleanses with a fresh cloth and natural soap, Sally feels confident Monday at school.

            You didn’t follow Sally’s example. Now your face crawls, skulking beneath. Relax. Don’t think the words maggot, botfly, lice, don’t picture the bulging swell.

            You couldn’t have resisted this instinct. You open the blade off the nail clippers and pry. It doesn’t come clean, but sticks like rubber cement; drops of clear mucus run between your fingers. Tears blind you. It’ll get worse if you stop.

            The flabby jaw and broken nose of a boxer, one eye swollen shut, is revealed below. The veins pulse with visible shocked tension. Reach in and pull. Now, it’s the hungry bones of a junkie, its cheeks like collapsed bridges, eyes the color of plastic Mardi Gras charms. Deeper. Thin, slippery lips curl into a cockeyed grimace, an open cold sore oozing pus. Scrape. Unearth a forehead barraged by pockmarks. Peel. Expose a moist grove overgrown with polyps.

            You don’t ask what it means, why you, or who these silicone doppelgangers are. It’s satisfying, like popping whiteheads. You try to be cautious, to treat every greasy sheathe with care. But pieces slip into the sink and down the drain.

            Deeper in, the membranes are flimsy, sliding loosely aside. A dense pulse of pain warps and wraps not only across, but inside, and then surfaces without a source. There’s an anesthesia in this distressed, ragged flesh.  

            Below this, your tissues are more undifferentiated, basic, and functional, the individual features sloughing into the mass. Maybe they are you, you as a degenerate in utero, you from the species next door.

            This last sticky transparent skin hides nothing. It falls off the blade like boiled sugar.

            How can you fear it if you can’t see it? What do they call this ghost vision? War veterans talk about this: missing limbs, parts, and organs that don’t stop thinking.

            That’s how you see it. The pale profile, rubbed smooth as stones on a rough salt beach, the puzzle of tunnels, sockets, gaps and gasps elaborate and ancient.

             That’s how you see it, how you will always see, have always seen, like a carcass the size of shipwrecks with eyes picked out by the gulls.





--
Genelle Chaconas is a 2015 MFA Writing and Poetics graduate of Naropa University. Their first chapbook is Fallout, Saints and Dirty Pictures (little m Press, 2011). Their work has been published or is forthcoming in Burningword, Exposition Review, Milkfist, Image OutWrite, WT Paterson’s The Asylum, Menacing Hedge, Crack the Spine, Dirty Chai, Third Wednesday, and others. They are a volunteer submission reader at Tule Review, and they hosted Red Night Poetry in Sacramento.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
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    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022