from apocalypse theory: a reader
by Kristy Bowen
My apocalypse theory and I have a baby we name “fortune.” Our baby has a goats head and faints when we say “Boo.” Fortune winnies all night and eats through the cotton pillowcase three different times. We keep leaving him in the cereal aisle at the Winn Dixie, but he always finds his way back top us, scraping at the hotel room door with his tiny cloven feet. My apocalypse theory covers his ears and rolls over. Fortune chews through the bedspread and licks the wallpaper clean off the wall.
My apocalypse theory is mostly waterproof, but sometimes the dampness makes him hallucinate. On the train, my mouth was filled with horrible things, sharpness and lies and the beginning of stories filled with blood. I’d lull him to sleep with by whispering the alphabet backwards over and over again. Eat too many overripe strawberries and throw up in the bathroom’s metallic sink. My apocalypse theory was sometimes charming and sometimes dying, but I made it up as I went along, my heart capable of the most horrible rhythms.
My apocalypse theory is patient, but only so far as I keep to the itinerary and don’t complain about the nausea Mostly, I’m troubled by bridges and faulty ball bearings. Obsessed with braided objects, broken machinery. I keep losing my shoes along the sides of roads we never return to. My apocalypse theory talks about plastics and nuclear energy as if they matter anymore, but really he’s saying I love you with his eyes. With his dirty fingers. He’s a little amazed when I walk into traffic. And still a little amazed when I walk out alive without a scratch.
Kristy Bowen’s work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Stolen Island, Yew Journal, Projectile, Requited, Diagram and Delirious Hem. She is the author of several longer and shorter written (and occasionally visual) endeavors, including two forthcoming prose fragment projects, the shared properties of water and stars (Noctuary Press, 2013) and beautiful, sinister (Maverick Duck Press, 2013), as well as a longer collection of poems girl show (Black Lawrence Press, 2013).
