Danielle Etienne
Straight to Hell and Astrology
Perfect Bound
60 pgs.
Excerpt: Kitchen Witch
"And when I press right here, see? That’s yer rib cage...You feel it?"
He pushes down a little with the big hunting knife, on bone on skin. My lungs are really hot and exploding and making my eyes and nose water.
"It’s a fuckin set a lungs, under the goddamn breast plate, see?"
"It’s not the breast plate."
"The fuck you talkin about girl, it’s RIGHT HERE."
TAP
Tap
Gentle like my grandma handling a dandelion in the field outside the barn but I can still feel hollow, steel.
My inside doesn’t have anything inside it.
"You’re on the sternum now...you don’t know shit about bones"
"Well I ain’t a doctor but neither are you so were both wrong I guess"
When the handle grazes my neck I feel wood and I’m afraid I’ll get a splinter. A splinter in your neck. A big ol broomhandle of wood sticking out into the fog.
Because sailors are always losing their way, always in disaster.
Mermaids come from disaster, so do sirens and people that grow tentacles and fuck each other with em.
Human squid and that man that turned into a tree because of his genetic code. They get it in.
India or Pakistan. Parasites.
Here they’ll burn your clit with a pall mall 100 if they catch you looking at an eclipse.
About Danielle
Danielle Etienne enjoys the occult, amputees, smoking, tarot, Phil Spector, and soft Pomeranian fur. She received her BA from Wayne State with a focus on playwriting and is currently working on her MA at Eastern Michigan University.
Her work has been featured in Wayne Literary Review, Hobart, DOGZPLOT, bSpecter Magazine (Brooklyn), and Honeysuckle Magazine.
Her first chapbook, Straight To Hell Or Astrology will be released later this month through DOGZPLOT PRESS. You can contact her for readings, work, or to talk about anything you want.
