Nothing more are they than transits of terrestrial bodies, in and out the studio in endless chains of murders, morcellations, mummifactions. True, I do not always strangle my victims. In fact, most times they come to me already dead. But I know I share the blame for their fate, the condition they arrive in, just as I have had a hand in the way their bodies bear the mark of me upon their leaving the basement and finding a place within the galleries above, or in some foreign facility which has paid the Museum for my work and the delivery of a set of specimens, and for the guarantee that all my preparations will not compromise the authenticity of any purchased piece. The pelts should be all whole and integral. All bones within should pertain to the proper species, as should all teeth. All classifying papers should be ordered, and should be certified as to their accuracy. And all animals should bear, somewhere on their closed external form, the seal to signify the work is mine.

When the dead are babies and have to stitch their own throats and crank as far as heaven is, in a dumb waiter, chains and a leather strap. U-needled and fiddle black wire. Don’t you know babies never blame their mothers, and become things other than babies. Babies crawl like toads into the forests. Hagar, it is the race that is set before me. Whole speeches disfigure their female bodies. Air the house, visit the shrine, articulate the dwelling place. Abandoned as adults, like an Indian. Lodi, lover, sexter, non-biological family and those “families” you send naked photos to. I’m sure my vagina’s on a billboard somewhere, where flesh meets the choice of Life. My surprise! I came across a magnificent willingness to be a scandal. Me as a human. Me as a perpetual virgin shoving sweet smelling things up in there. . . .