...........................................................

 Rebecca Loudon

from

Queer Wing-ed

They have human voices, but their roar is a proverb

~Henry Darger

Henry's Prayer to the Blessed Virgin

     HOLY be YOUR purity

     cloistered in YOUR physik world

     crimson madder petticoat

     sneaky sneak kitchen thief

     my coat sweeps

     where babies sleep

     humbly pray for a child of my own

     prance with GOD'S AWFUL HOOF

     plump with milk and gasoline

     I PLEDGE THEE

     an arrow a sparse bucket

     a shiny mop

     HAIL MARY full of grace

     after-nods and scab

     forgive my willful mean temper

     humbly pray for a child of my own

     I scrubbed the floor in the sleeping room

     one hundred feet on hands and knees

     no reply from YOU

     stop it now your nasty glare

     QUEEN of Heaven Rejoice!

     the grim undressing of children

     made to work themselves to death

     blessed are the meek

     the imbecile

     the feeble-minded

     the bleeding callus

     the snap pouch

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Henry's Secondary Prayer to Saint Glinda the Good

     I offer this day my daily

     hole heart chicken for dinner

     and paint boxes

     maroon lake blistered pink

     to color a child's mouth

     whipped it up I did in my dement

     kissed them oh the oh

     skeleton Red Reera

     broke clean through I prayed

     sought my best reward oh the OH

     healed by almost nothing

     a tender chest the dress

     and what was what was

     OH underneath

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Off the coast after dark the flame bit down with glee

—The Alexian Brothers Hospital

     Stingpin in the kitchen

     hands a dead skin spectacle

     grit-rough plunged agin and agin

     in boiled water a wrath of sick

     vegetables stacked and gleam

     healthy lamb I sang

     The Butcher song

     tail up turnaway rubber men

     come to rope you come to beat

     dukey and the kiester trunk

     scrub scrubscrub here lammy lamb

     sew up all the ba-a-bies

     salmonella in the cups

     milk fever pizzle rot

     soap and wet the livelong day

     oh for a trebuchet to shoot a fork

     through Sister Bulldog's birdy ruff

     bleat bleat I am not a sheep

     mud season in my boots

     oh a holly jolly sea cruise

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Joice

     shook my insides I fell

     saw a goat and other visions

     in the Rush Chair in the swing

     I was brown my brown dangle

     in the box because I shat myself

     because I was in the box

     you have to laugh

     but I'm beautiful I saw me in the glass

     my penmanship rose like a story dragon

     in the bed with rubber sheets

     a gobbleberry picnic

     night nurses Prussian Blue

     and Red Hat

     and Red Madder

     King Henry with a mop and bucket

     didn't say a word just shhh

     sometimes he put his finger in a hole

     in my head

     it's a secret what shined for him

     were the colors

     I flew at night after bath

     around the ceiling where

     dangle balls burned

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Angeline

     pink girls their

     weird parts stretched

     in Utica cribs

     pried opened bowels

     I'm quiet but I've eyelids

     sewn to my palms

     kneesides and backsides

     I watch out for my sisters

     Chicago for instance

     drank wine with my father

     before he met the whore

     before my tenders grew

     rampage and melancholy

     swung my pipi that tag

     good as any boy's 

     they made me drink

     swallow's juice and blood

     from the ear of an ass

     hellebore and antimony

     cold water shot inside

     ice sickles

     I smiled for them

     but I kept my secrets

     gruel smiles

     watched every gd thing

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Catherine

Catherine in the Catherine in the Catherine in the packbath Henry lied on top on top spinning the little General's boot on my belly every night my scalp grew scales arm legs grew scales I was not a lizard there were rumors a tail but I chewed it off I was limber and sore Thank You Doctor Catherine Wheel pass-around-girl saluted tipjets hid spikes in my bootheels before morning bell at quarter to 5 breakfast at 6 AM followed by work period there were woods sinking calm centrifugal force machine Dinner at noon expelling steam then tea then we rode outdoors on a miniature Circular Railroad

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Jennie

     give me honey

     a clyster of mutton broth

     and brown sugar

     diddler of the D words

     Delerious

     Disturbed

     Deluded

     Jenny brown-eye

     Jennie brown-eye

     I ripped my hair

     spat in the vicar's face

     grouse basted in butter

     salt and pepper

     I would git in the camisole

     for a single bite of pear

     tie my wrists 

     bolt me to the floor

     I knew dead and draft horses

     before I knew milk

     don't cry burrow on the spruce's 

     lee side make a nest

     light fires

     Henry's sewing uniforms

     I caught his scent on garments

     on hair on the blue-lipped

     exhausted girls

     I can hide for hours

     so went my sixth

     and seventh years

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Daisy

     I playt a Wurlitzer in church once

     now the box with holes and slats

     holds me still

     they call it a school but we arent taught

     Illinois Asylum for Feeble Minded Children

     I had a wrist cuff 2 of them

     on a chair in the bughouse

     I was 7 years old

     we worked at low tables

     we wore rubber gloves

     the spigots looked like baby elephant trunks

     drinking

     I build a waxwing broke now in the middle

     I ran inside the wheel until I ran down

     crows followd me into the bath

     wore plague masks

     stuffed with honeysuckle and gauze

     I climbed a tree Castanea dentate

     the nuns said it had teeth and laught at me

     I had a difficult time without my spectacles

     a brown towel fell in the mud

     hello I said thinking it was an animal

     it didn't speak back a great beak
     opent and unfurlt from the split

     in my head where I had been beat

     my skin turnt brown brown

     water stairs and shit wot

     I trembled running with the sponge

     Devils!

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Hettie

     I had a key I screed my voice

     bit the guard's leg

     said SPANDREL and I knew

     what it was and phylactery

     he had beestings said come here girl for a taste

     midges swung round his head

     tried everything I could think of to make him

     slop his slide down the corridor

     what was his sacrifice 

     his mumble about us?

     I was a God in his closet.

     Elsie Elsie with her red hat and anklets

     took more than wings to tempt us

     to march into that battle

     had a secret sewn in my gown

     my military coat's inside pocket.

     What did he know about Family or Henry

     and the BEAST?

     Threw rocks on us he did took our clothes

     he did look—and Elsie she can't even talk

     sputtering and burping

     her tiny tumescent lump

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Living the lives of little saints

     I did not like other children
     I did not like to get my hands dirty

     washed and washed and washed

     I sang a washing song I wrote myself

     Elsie pickles and sassafras

     lying in the long wet grass

     climbs a tree and skins her knee

     Elsie pickles and sassafrass

     Other children did not like me

     my dog was called Dancer

     we played Jungle on the banks of the canal

     until we met Henry then we played Army

     I had a stick-carved gun

     Henry pointed his thick finger

     BANG!

     Henry knew when rain

     was about to break

     Mum screamed my name at late

     carried me on his back

     like a big old turtle

     called me Annie Banannie

     was mostly quiet

     except when he laughed

     he was big as a Zoo

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Steering the water with a stick

     V and V

     Violet's Voice

     inside the ecstatic wall

     Bugles then the alfalfa field afire

     Violet daren't wake the nats my hard-toed rib

     a cookie pulse come downstairs

     smelt bread and sugar Chicago

     bristled like a comical bird

     she said Henry

     do you know Antelope?

     the word curled inside ant the way she walked

     I spit on the floor that day tried my best not to slip

     into her dumbdrum as it was not yet the age

     of television we had not gone Atomic

     children stayed put in the forest

     with gold hair and animals and beads

     excommunicated from school

     looked on as crazy

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Traumnovelle

     ammonia all around their lithe stains

     the corners of Hettie's mouth

     the corners of Joice's hankydab

     amused like kittens

     I were mostly invisible

     Joice counted 10

     once you're on the trolley

     you have to stay inside

     there were rumors

     nothing to report from the meadow

     Hettie & Joice rode the carousel

     hunted the flapity flap tent's billow sides

     squealed or laughed invisible

     after dark lawfull devastation I watched

     my dangle scissor eye

     my glint eye opened and closed

     a reeking genius a real zinger

     quasi una fantasia

     spindle-shanked & feathered

     pulled their curls grunted girlsoupgirlsoup

     liver dumpling girls

     round & round their transparent eyelids

     tripsy shot through with blood lines

     this morning muscle-bound in a fur hat

     bristled edges sucked out the light

     MY dream afterall MINE dressage & kewpies

     an amphitheater where 2 girls

     spun & rolled & showered me with boiled peanuts & beer

     sugar-coated dresses dull

     as a horse's blanket a brigand horse a cluttersack

     rotted between his legs I made them look

     simply to possess the underneath

     urine soaked hospital beds is all seriousness

     are you CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN?

     no sound reached the outside world

     Hettie & Joice pulled their faces to their knees

     I built a wasp nest from newspapers

     spit & hair

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Violet

     a queer tornado

     rolled up the sky

     my head burped atmospheric

     Easter Sunday swung like a sore

     shoes gone

     I screamed bloody hell and was taken

     you know 

     the BATH OF SURPRISE?

     I flange my bejesus pants off

     a gallows platform dumped

     me in icy water

     then bloodletting leeches

     or animals with a beaker

     a rubber hose a trumpet

     my shoes had once

     been leather sewn by hand

     we lived in a two story house on the end

     of an alley between Adams and Monroe

     Sweetie Pie

     Sweetie Pie

     that was his name

     Not my sister

     But the twister

     swung through

     swallowed the entire town
     everything got quiet fast

     like breakfast in bed

     when you been sick

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Henry Addresses the Vivian Princesses 
in the Guise of a Dog

     listen 

     *BARK*

     drain the infected paw

     burrow into my fur

     let's Round Robin

     let's Truth or Dare

     find me a boil

     that oozes milk

     nothing less My Babies

     My Children

     saddle up now

     *BARK*

     approach me from the left

     pet and pat and scratch

     I know what you've been up to

     smell you with my terrible nose

     telling secrets?

     none of that I'll bite your fingers

     chew your hats feathers and all

     let's ride to town for honey and licorice

     rope and matches fabric for Elsie's torn pocket

     open your blouses milk

     bottles clink on Chicago's frozen porches

     let go the cream ring the bell

     my head is a bell

     ring it ring

     *BARK*

     *BARK*

     *BARK*

     prance in the dogmouth sky

     *BARK*

     climb aboard my broad back Oh Boys and Girls

     LET US PRAY

     salute the milk pail!

     milk mustache!

     milk suck!

     milk pus!

     milk bone!

     milk and cookies!

     let down your tails

     *BARK*

     Darlings twirl my bristle coat

     feast with Saints on the banks

     of the Labrador Sea

     there is milk inside me

     and milk's slick sheet

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Riding the Slough of Despond


     I knew all along there were an underwing
     angry with her tricks her fetching doodad
     wore a hunch-coat with leather trim
     rucked as butcher paper I had no perverse
     nor fun from that

     I had no
     I had none
     I had no raw nor anvil
     I had a Quest
     oh be goddamn a Secret then
     on Ferry Slip Road
     at Sunbeam Creek or Nestucca
     by the Canal

     Smelt of bleach and oilwood in church
     fluid cleaners along the trail
     a little girl for my very own
     GOD gave me great failure
     boils carbuncles warts I was not
     a monster a troll nor stupid as they wrote
     just a Secret sewn into my nightclothes
     where my hands never did not stop flapping



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Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of Tarantella and Radish King, from Ravenna Press, and Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home and Cadaver Dogs, from No Tell Books. She is a professional musician and teaches violin to children. She maintains a blog at http://radishking.blogspot.com