Dinosaur Bees

from “Cultured”
Dodie Bellamy

Stubby white utility candles stand upright in globs of wax Nance and I dripped onto mayonnaise jar lids. Shadows tremble across the basement’s cinder block walls, our eleven-year-old fingers hover on the tear-drop shaped planchard. It begins to move slowly, in little circles, then jerks across the Ouija board in violent, purposeful jags. The spirit spells out, “F-U-C-K-Y-O-U-R-P-U-S-S-Y.” The spirit always talks dirty. Nance and I are lovers, but that’s a big secret—even from one another. The sex happens during our weekly sleepovers, when she pretends to be unconscious. She talks to me in her sleep—I name a boy or a Beatle, and her dreaming self channels that boy or Beatle. “You are so luvly, my luv,” the voice says in a British accent. Ghostly fingers and mouth roam across my body, sucking and prodding, until I climax. The orgasms astonish and terrify me—like they don’t belong to me, like my groin has been possessed by this ravenous elsewhere—a clenching so brutal it could rip a phonebook in two. I can’t get enough of them. Ten years later Nance and I, fully awake lovers, will join a cult. The bedroom we share in a house with other cult members has impossibly high ceilings, windows with thick wooden frames stretching from knee high to heaven, light floods in, flickering through leafy Indiana oaks and elms—the two of us are moving in slow motion, writhing on the mattress on the floor, our spirits swelling, filling the room, bouncing against the cracked 19th century ceiling, we are great chords of being, gliding and spasming, our whirly-wind chakras twirling in unison. Spiritual lesbian sex is much better than our drugged lesbian sex of the past couple of years.

DODIE BELLAMY'S chapbook Barf Manifesto was named best book of 2009 under 30 pages by Time Out New York. Other books include Academonia, Pink Steam, Cunt-Ups, and The Letters of Mina Harker. She lives in San Francisco.

Ricky Garni ::	How to Write Letters About God, pt. 1
	Yoo Hoo!

Larry O. Dean ::	The Sound Effects Bible

Nicelle Davis & Cheryl Gross ::	The Post-Partum Sideshow—or—What Do I Know About Being A Freak?

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming ::	You Don't Know Me

E.E. King ::	The Case of Dr. Dalton Plastic Surgeon

Dodie Bellamy ::	from “Cultured”

Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz ::	List of Things You Have to Do
	The Happy Fun of Love

Stacey Wilson ::	Photographs of two found poems

Claudia Lamar ::	Ouija Board Transcripts
	excerpts

Claudia Lamar & Elizabeth Leavitt ::	fortunes + dibuixos

Caitlin Roper ::	Ransom Note Poem #5

Molly Gaudry ::	Die With Me When I Die

Travis Macdonald ::	Chapter Four from “The Story”