Reb Livingston

from Bombyonder

Rauan mocking the border as his way to emerge.

I’m the border of Rauan, I draw the lines.

Rundown Rauan who hasn’t been updated, surreal and awful Rauan full of purples and
blues, moving away to Cornish, not for the benefit of hope, for the benefit of revival,
Rauan as a dead language, we were traveling to a place called His before we got called
away to Algebra, a few yards into the border we reach the town of Bird Call, neighboring
the Decapital.

At this point I’m considering giving up, we keep driving south but can’t get past the town
of Worm, it’s everywhere and it’s deep.

I shouldn’t have called Rauan a cock deathmaster.

I delete Rauan and he agrees to counseling, meets with a raccoon-faced dragon called
Exterminator.

This process refer to itself as psychic intertextuality.

For the historian, Rauan has many non-existing meanings, for the stylish he’s an allusion
to the mandrake, hipsters name their death erections after him, Rauan as an image that
only makes sense in the dark of borderline knowledge.

For an archaeologist, Rauan derives meaning for my benefit, my notion that he’s a code
to be cracked into usable quotes for the benefit of the middle classes, as an archaeologist,
he fits into a my final form to comprehend the allusions of a poet, though generally he
simply refers to the users who use his name as a theory to be alluded to in a future text.

Scuba divers believed the Rauanelk to be extinct for a thousand years. Beliefs are limited
to what can be proven and it was never proven that Rauanelks lived underwater. There
were sightings, which in the end, were always attributed to excessively hairy, armored
mermen.

Historians found no written, oral or visual records of any Rauan or Rauanelk. Historians
believe him to be neither fact nor myth. Historians simply don’t believe in the existence,
nor the imaginative possibility, of Rauan.

from Bombyonder

People with decomposing faces acting normally, like they’re not from around here, like
they have to graduate from someplace before their jaws collapse, how hideous this looks,
trying to get home before I overheat, right away, I mean it, I’m crumbling, crumbling, oh,
what a kind bomb, what a kind bomb.

Taking the wrong way out, how to get out of the hole your blown, on the wrong side and
far from where I want to be, wrong direction, wrong road, misspelled and completely
wrong, the wrong version, wrong part, wrong elevator, what he’s saying is wrong,
something wrong with his face, my logic rubbed him wrong.

His face as the early stages of composition.

Was I wrong to be bombed?

Wrong again, wrote down the wrong number, paying attention in meaningful ways
amounting to broader potholes, wrong side of the road, that spiral staircase is probably
unsafe, wrong address, wrong contact, typing the password wrong, got my order wrong,
wrong shoes, make a right, wrong turn, wrong lane, right back where I started, I said
Andrew Carnegie built this, I meant Rauan shattered this and named it Rauanelot then
changed it to Atlanrauan.

Rauan’s name as the streaming piss from a fire hydrant’s nightmares.

Rauan sinking all his names, sinking along the time span when I could distinguish one
man from another by his name, these brand identities reflecting how he once wished to be
reflected in our shields, so wrong, Rauan, trend transcendence isn’t how you impress a
busy mom, you’re simply not a name she can trust.

from Bombyonder

For a fact Rauan wasn’t born, Rauan claiming he was born in 1925 to get the respect that comes with age, when my baby was born, born with only a head in a sarcophagus, born technically dead, the doctors made a body for my baby.

Now my baby has a body, just not the right body, I ask the parents of the baby born with just a chest if I can have the heart.

And there is hesitation.

Would seeing my baby change their minds?

It changed Rauan’s mind, he donated his unborn face, long before he was never born, my babe in Rauanface born to previous psychic circumstance, the sacramental act of passing the mask, a mental note of busyness, nothing like the clown mask I expected, suspended and regressing into bond and hook, yes, I took Rauan’s face as our own and not one speck of sperm.

from Bombyonder

The giantess of the swamp descended from the genetically engineered fish of lore.

They were silvered and when you sliced them, they split apart like fabric at the seams.

Soon these fish of lore began genetically engineering humans to slice apart.

For years the humans and fish dissected one another, in the name of engineering.

Then the historic rebellion happened and all fish and humans were freed from the swamp and sent to their lands of assigned origin.

Except those assigned to be from Pompeii.

Those fish and people no longer had a land to return to, so they remained in the swamp, breeding, undisturbed in the muck.

Until they were disturbed.

The giantess with the ancient penis protruding from her chest emerged from the swamp for one purpose: to knead bones.

Reb Livingston

Reb Livingston is the author of God Damsel (No Tell Books 2010) and Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books 2007) and curates The Bibliomancy Oracle. She's currently finishing her first novel, Bombyonder.