Sep 12

orlan or what/sideshow lizards & lions

by dylan krieger

orlan or what

 

little lamb electrified by elective procedures jigsaw muzzle

mosaic nymph myth venus europa mona lisa

who is your face today? kept wide awake on the operating table

she reads the world aloud, like a greeting card

something to be poked and pressed until the flesh falls out

squeamish? me? perhaps yes, but what arrests

is her agency, the choice to sheer herself to canonize a patchwork

mess, cooing hypnotically in french, la la lavinia

what works of art does the disfigured damsel harbor?

with pilfered hands, philomela’s plucked tongue, to whose surprise

is it her masterpiece is a performance pantomimed in blood

her busted lip, cartoonish horns a thorn in the side

of the porn-fueled implant industry corseted morgue

botched conformity saint orlan, pray for us

with your cruella-may-care glitter add-ons two-toned hair

feed me the anxious sacraments of your pitchfork propaganda

stare suture-eyed into the camera blow the scalpel

a sticky kiss, drop your lips right where you want them

whisper amen and mean a woman shedding skins

 

sideshow lizards & lions

the tattooed patterns of raptorial mammals have always spelled rebellion. this is the origins story circus performers evolve to self-camouflage. why get a grown-up job when you could be a sea-god? a jungle king complete with whisker implants, claws installed by lurid surgeons. when finally the last eye tooth is sharpened, what strange dust rides the wind—your bones a pollen, a simple allergen. the belly pelt elongates, tongues fork or roar, the skin an afterthought of scales or fur. some may call it “unnatural,” but this is what the body’s for: to meddle in the shape and pantomime of every organ’s lurching gore, to point at what you were before—an alien returned to earth. the constellations can’t perceive the beasts they form, but you’re a horse of a different curse: in the swing of milky orbit, you can swap one shoddy star out for another, try on a horde of spetial costumes and choose which predator to rocket toward 

 

 

 

Dylan Krieger is a transistor radio picking up alien frequencies in south Louisiana. She lives in the back of a little brick house with a feline reincarnation of Catherine the Great and sunlights as a trade mag editor. She is the author of ‘Giving Godhead’ (Delete Press, 2017) and ‘dreamland trash’ (Saint Julian Press, forthcoming). Her more recent projects include an irreverent reimagining of philosophical thought experiments and an autobiographical meditation on the Church of Euthanasia. Find more of her work at www.dylankrieger.com.

 

Art by featured artist Osmyn Oree

Ever since I started photographing nudes I noticed a troubling pattern within the community of photographers in my hometown. Nudes and especially the nude female is often portrayed in a sexual or objective way. Fetishistic beauty and making women look ‘good-enough’ was something I believe detracted from photographing nude bodies. My photography aims to reclaim the nude body from such fetishizations and show that bodies, especially female bodies are far more important than just objects of beauty or intrigue. Each shoot I set out to make my photographs less about the nude and more about the meaningful portrayal of a person. I want to tell a story about the person through the photographs or give the viewer an insight into who the person is and make the nudity less about the eroticism or shock value and more about the universal sense of rawness and honesty.