Author: Rachel Swirsky

Cites

• Rachel Swirsky (1)
  • IN: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, and Other Stories (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: On her wedding day she is red and black and white: cheeks flushed with desire, dark hair spilling over bridal gown. She sits before her mirror, toasting the best man. He smiles, tips scarlet tablets into her ruby wine. “To celebrate,” he says. He is the huntsman, dark burning before her wild, confused brain. Slashes, wails — now, he is dragging her through black forests of lamp-posts toward a white-walled hacienda, skylights shining down on alabaster vases, cement sculptures, carpets pale as innocence. Into her ear he whispers desire for her secret, inevitable ruby cut from her chest and stowed in a box beneath his pillow. Drugs distort his face: huntsman, dwarf, neglectful father, he could be any of the men who’ve trailed black wounds across her soul. Her prince was a mirage dreamed between bloodthirsty men. This story is red with her own blood. To live it is to bleed. He pulls away, drags her to a bedroom lined with mirrors glittering colorless diamond facets like coffin walls. She hallucinates witches black in mirrored depths, cackling at her and her and her and her in a thousand refractions. She is fairest of all. She is white as diamond. She hitches her wedding gown and runs into the mirrors to shatter the coffin to slip into a tale of beige and pink and grey.
    FROM: May 17, 2011Black, Red, White, (2011), Poem, US

Cited by

• Rachel Swirsky (1)
  • IN: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love, and Other Stories (2013) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: On her wedding day she is red and black and white: cheeks flushed with desire, dark hair spilling over bridal gown. She sits before her mirror, toasting the best man. He smiles, tips scarlet tablets into her ruby wine. “To celebrate,” he says. He is the huntsman, dark burning before her wild, confused brain. Slashes, wails — now, he is dragging her through black forests of lamp-posts toward a white-walled hacienda, skylights shining down on alabaster vases, cement sculptures, carpets pale as innocence. Into her ear he whispers desire for her secret, inevitable ruby cut from her chest and stowed in a box beneath his pillow. Drugs distort his face: huntsman, dwarf, neglectful father, he could be any of the men who’ve trailed black wounds across her soul. Her prince was a mirage dreamed between bloodthirsty men. This story is red with her own blood. To live it is to bleed. He pulls away, drags her to a bedroom lined with mirrors glittering colorless diamond facets like coffin walls. She hallucinates witches black in mirrored depths, cackling at her and her and her and her in a thousand refractions. She is fairest of all. She is white as diamond. She hitches her wedding gown and runs into the mirrors to shatter the coffin to slip into a tale of beige and pink and grey.
    FROM: May 17, 2011Black, Red, White, (2011), Poem, US