“We are born abject – that is mortal and speaking.” Julia Kristeva
Abject Dictionary
A for abjection.
The term abjection literally means “the state of being cast off”.
Abandoned: They left me. From infancy to infirmity. I speak, alone again. Unworthy, abject; naturally.
Abasement: For their gaze, for their touch, I will do anything.
. They love me. They love me not My mouth is full of want, hard as it is to get my tongue around it.
Adultery: First you can’t see anything
Then you can’t look. Away.
Finding half a worm in the apple handed you.
Angst: Ich habe. Du hast. Wir haben.
Ich bin. Du bist. Wir sind. Allein.
A long drive. A longing. No place.
Shaking all over, and sitting still
Ich will rein! (Could this be accompanied by a banging on the door door.) Ich will rein!
Ax: My father’s. The one I
lost, left behind (a long scar on his knee)
in the Christmas tree forest.
Angst: Ich habe. Du hast. Wir haben.
Ich bin. Du bist. Wir sind. Allein.
A long drive. A longing. No place.
Shaking all over, and sitting still
Ich will rein!
Ax: My father’s. The one I lost
left behind ( a long scar on his knee
in the Christmas tree forest.
B
A bass drum. A basement. A {dirty} bed. A boo boo. Boobs. Boom.
“Every body does it, every body boom booms down.” [1]
Balance: Fall’s loss.
Belly: What stands between me and you.
Blake: Nobodaddy’s bellyache.
Blizzard: A blinding white storm cleaner than a bed sheet that sleeps one
C
Hard or soft, we scream for. Puts the knock on cock, the shunt in cunt.
Cannabis: Good oil, but unlike canola. I never could roll a joint. Don’t like
the more convenient drops or capsules, still unappetizing and brains my fog.
Coffee: She says, “I have low blood pressure.” 100 0ver 50.
She found too much cream in her coffee nauseating. Me too. I drink mine black.
In the rehab I convinced the nurses not to take my vitals until I had finished a caffinated coffee from Timmies. The hospital serves No coffee with Caffeine! What kind of a place was this? The nurses couldn’t find my pulse and wouldn’t believe it could be under 50. I said, just wait until I have had real coffee.
Coronavirus: novel or Covid-19 a pandemic doing the Bible Story tellers proud. Where’s Moses when you need him. We’ll see, says my brother ominously.
Communion: Most childhood mornings my breakfast (and my brother’s too)
Brocken; bread+ coffee + cream after morning devotions
Contempt: How I am held, how I hold myself, even when nobody is looking.
Say, look at the cool 1963 Jean-Luc Goddard film starring Bridgitte Bardot.
I did, while my wife was out.
Curry
Chop onion. Dice/crush 4 cloves of garlic and ginger to taste
(3 – 4 tablespoons fresh). Peel and cube 1 sweet potato
Heat oil in a deep skillet or Dutch oven. Put in the onion, wait until translucent
Then add grated ginger and garlic and cook a few more minutes.
Set aside. Brown meat (if using hamburger, may also be known as Pakistani kima).
Lamb, goat, or chicken are preferred. I usually use chicken.If using chicken, remove skin and bones.
Skin for sure. Make curry paste as meat browns:4-6 Tablespoons mild or medium curry powder, chicken stock (tablespoon or so), or 1 – 2 Tablespoons, Madras, or hot curry also can use Thai Red Curry which I use now in making the paste. 1 tsp crushed cumin seed, 2 tsp coriander seed 1 tsp tumeric, 1tsp lemon juice, a little chicken stock, and brown sugar. only if needed to make a paste the consistency of molasses. Take the meat out of skillet, put the onions (with garlic ginger) back in adding the sweet potato.
Add the curry paste, mix, and then add the browned meat. After all mixed together add one can (19oz or 28oz depending on amount of meat, high quality canned tomato. Tomato paste can also be used to temper consistency… If you choose to use fresh tomatoes, remember to remove skin and seeds. (which is why I use canned). Serve with rice. Basmati is nice. Serve with sliced bananas, apples, raisins, to be added to the dish according to taste. I often put the raisins in the curry while it is still cooking. I like ginger ale with this; authentic ginger beer might add some extra spice.
Coffee: “I have low blood pressure.” 100 0ver 50. Makes two.
She finds too much cream in her coffee nauseating. She drank coffee all day long.
Communion: Breakfast. A lot to swallow. ‘Brocken; bread+ coffee + cream
Contempt: How I am held, how I hold myself, even when nobody is looking.
Say, look at the cool 1963 Jean-Luc Goddard film starring Brigitte Bardot.
I did, while my wife was out.
D
Damnation, Dark, Deception, Doubt.
Death: Pain’s healing game.
Delight: At the end of the tunnel.
Depression: Licking my fucking wound. Also:
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
who is the most worthless one of all?”
Also: A falling out.
A caving in. (See also Death.)
Also: Feeding the parasite.
Also: A Dream of Eternal Damnation
In this dream I am lying at the bottom of a well. It is a dungeon.
There is only one small square of light high above my head for a few hours a day.
It is well beyond my reach. Still I take my golden crown from my head,
scrape it against the stone in an attempt to raise myself to the light. I never get there. The light disappears. I fall back to the bottom.
The next day the light reappears. I taken my golden crown from my head
in my two hands, scrape it against the stone, try to pull myself up to the light.
I never ever make it.
Desire: The long way home. To slip inside the none other. A sharpened knife.
Divorce: The opposite of desire. Love death certificate. Failure
of nerve. A pessimists reward. A final decree.
Dreams: Hello in there. Truth or scare.
E
The sound of a dying rabbit, an infant’s cry.
Half a laugh, half of he and me, and a third of she.
Ejaculation: An exclamation necessary for conception.
Entropy: Marriage, with children
Envy: Every good boy does fine.
F
The dirtiest letter. Bite your lip ‘til it bleeds.
Fatigue: Anemia of the spirit.
Forgiveness: Impossible love.
Fun: What I don’t know.
G
Gag order, finger down your throat.
Grace: A diamond that holds the light underground.
H
Of he and of ha. Panting. Irony’s forebear.
A kick in the stomach. Now exhale.
Hemorrhoid: “Riding the peanut.” The agony of derriere. Ouch! Shhhhh.
Hell: Neuron fiddles.
Syndrome burns.
Horror: What choice is this? To be laid to rest with mother while she lies weeping?
I
I’d barely hid.
Incest: My mother told me this story the night before she left for home.
About three weeks ago a cousin from Saskatchewan phones out of the blue from the bus station. She needed a ride, not from the bus station, but from where she was staying to the funeral the next day. Mom likes driving in southern Manitoba in her white car and agrees to takes her.
On the way to the funeral my mother’s cousin asks if they could stop for a viewing at the chapel before the body was taken to the church for the service. She said she had not seen the dead woman, her sister, for a long time. Mom likes driving fast in her white car so she hurries the car and there is time to stop.
They go into the chapel. There is only one plain closed casket. They both sit and wait, though mother isn’t sure for exactly what. Eventually the undertaker comes to load the dead woman in the casket into his black, already running, hearse, parked just outside the door of the funeral home. Taken by surprise he does not hesitate to open the casket, stepping back into his office to allow some privacy. The hearse is still running and the smell of the sweet exhaust fumes are noticeable.
My mother’s cousin steps up to the coffin, looks intensely at her sister and curses through her teeth.
YOU POOR DISGUSTING MISERABLE OLD BITCH
IF YOU HAD LIVED EVEN A HALF DECENT LIFE
YOU MIGHT HAVE LIVED A LITTLE LONGER
FOUND PEACE IN THE EYES OF GOD AND LIVED
A MUCH HAPPIER LIFE ON EARTH, NEVER MIND
IN THE AFTERLIFE! YOU WILL BURN IN HELL
FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE!
My mother had not met either of these women before the day of the funeral. She admits she was shocked at how anyone, even a stranger, could speak to her dead sister like that; sending her to the grave with curses. They leave the funeral chapel quickly, hearing the hurried footsteps of the undertaker.
child with her son. He was seventeen when he had fuck
My mother got the whole sorry story later. The dead woman had had a ed his mother. There was no mention of what happened to the baby. But the motherfucker was not allowed at the funeral. At the cemetery he stood alone at the painted white iron gates and cried his eyes out.
Interloper: Fuck. Image.
J
A place to hang my grey fedora.
Jazz: A push against the dark, making it up as you go along looking for the truth blowing hot and cool in a room full of smoke and action under the tables thinking about something else sunlight or suicide or fingering your woman or your horn.
Jealousy: The colour of my eyes. My wife lies. The hook, The I.
K
A squeeze
in the throat.
Knocking the fish dead
bones in the bottom of the boat,
silent or read.
Kiss: Looking for love, with lips + tongue; mouth agape.
The first moving picture. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Kill: The family romance, ill conceived, Never kill
more than you can eat.(See also sacrifice)
L
A lull in the mouths squall.
Language: The pit of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
S’pit from the curled tongue where it lies.
The arc of how we come to know each
other. Powdered milk.
Laugh: Aggression wearing a mask. A figure of fun.
Love: The aim of the game. Hello.
Of these, the greatest. Look.
God is. You are. Slipping though my fingers.
Id’s not here, pregnant pause
menopause, it’s nothing
but blues to me.
M
Mother’s milk. Pursed lips. The end of hum.
Mennonite: What I am, not?
Mind: I do. I don’t. I really do. Die.
Grey clay gumbo, folds into itself.
An open book left too long
in the rain.
Mortgage: Death grip.
Mother: “In any case, my other is hostile to me.”
Eternal. Suffering. Contrary Mary.
N
Nerves never notice nouns. Z’s fall back position.
Nausea: A mouth full of liver
A stomach full of bile
The diaphragm aquiver
A rejection of the vile.
No: The all ways wrong answer, unless uttered by put upon women & children.
O
A hole where the vein gets in. A ring and a rose. The empty tomb.
Obey: There’s no other way. Bend over, do what they say.
Obituary: Right me.
Orgasm: A standing ovation. A sinking ship in mid-ocean.
The holy only one. A party in our parts.
P
The uncomfortable mattress. A flogging instrument.
Perverse: The shoe’s on the other foot.
Poetry: A voiding fiction.
Prayer: Thought activated universal server.
Psychoanalysis: Fire the alcohol on the wound.
Sliding into home. Hold the poem.
Pyre: Died, owes bed.
Q
The cutest letter, leaving behind, a wag.
Quarantine: The leper changes his spots, gives Jesus a sign.
Quarry: Winnow the rock pile for poems worth throwing.
Quest: Looking for the rest.
Quote: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” and
“All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.”[2]
R
The dog in the manager.
Gentlemen, start your engines!
Rage: One hand One hand
holds me still holds her
the other still the other
drops like an ax. drops like an ax.
Riddle: What’s warm & brown & crawls up your leg?
Homesick shit.
S
Hairpin in paradise. Crawling king snake. Garden hose. Steam heat. The sizzle in sin as well as in steak.
Sacrifice: The dead son.
Forsaken. Altar boy.
Silence: Not a speaking part. Honey in a spoon.
Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
(See also Death.)
Shit: A poor substitute for brains. A slip between the sheets.
Never Trust a fart.
Sin “This offer null and void where prohibited by law.”
SITCOM: Single Income, Three Children, Outrageous Mortgage.
(See also; Entropy, Mortgage)
T
Tut tut. Tits to me. Nuts to you.
Traces: Love’s spoor. i.e.
| S
he traces |
| my heart |
| with her tongue |
| a knife |
| in one hand |
| a pearl |
| in the other |
Transference: A withdrawal. A deposit. Without entropy.
Or: “Doctor, doctor, have heard the news?
I’ve got a bad case of loving you!”
Transgression: One step over the line sweet Jesus.
U
U(h)r. Before time. I never wear a watch. It still bites me.
Unconditional: There’s no life like it. I hear “Let’s make a deal” even
with my fingers in my ears. Outside the perimeter of
the city it is true I can see the horizon and know the
sun rises and sun sets. Where there are trees, say beside
the river, hear the wind blow, boys, hear the wind blow.
Ugly: Ugly Divorce. What your friends get, though it’s none of your affair. Hah.
V
Bite your lip. Slip my hip. I’ll get over you.
Vasectomy: I swear the doc took a call leaving me in the middle of the procedure, scrotum slit, while I wait for him to tie the knot. Balls as big as grapefruits five weeks later, more incisions; and five days of demerol eyes rolling around in their sockets much like my balls in their bag. Scarred.
Victor: Spoils history. Publishes aversion.
W
Weaned wee ones
wet whistle woman’s woe.
Wind: There where times I could sense God
breathing above me the broad leaves
stirring heaven and below was me
left with books to hold on to.
Work: Snake bit. Rolling the stone up the hill to hide the hole in our hearts.
X
Crucifix. Excess. Ex-wife, expatriate. Explain.
Xenophobia: Unlike unlike me.
X-rated: Hey, no looking! Watcha doin with your browsing history.
Y
Yesterday seems so far away, chromosomes
slipping the divining rod.
Yes: Always the right answer.
Z
Schnorer.
Zero: Something for nothing.
Zipper: Imagine. Teeth to hide behind. Teeth to bite into your thin sin skin.
This story appeared in an old issue of Report on Business magazine.
Zip it Up!
A clerk at a local convenience store can thank his lucky zipper
for saving him from serious injury, even death. Something went wrong
during a late night robbery, and the thief took a shot at the clerk with
his small calibre pistol. The bullet lodged in the clerks zipper, failing to
penetrate. The thief turned and ran, leaving empty-handed.
[1] From a children’s song.
[2] Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest.