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There’s a man inside this woman, and he’s alive. But he can’t speak—she can’t speak—the face is peeled back, the skull empty, and now the cap of bone is being plastered back in place, and now the skin is being stitched shut. The autopsy is over—she’s closed, she’s done—and he’s still in there, with her, in another country, with the smell of shit and blood that’s never going to go away, and he’s not himself at all, he’s her, he’s Gloria Luby—bloated, full of gas, fat and white and dead forever.

I

What a lucky beast I am,

when he cleans up nice

and nicks his perfect face.

I get to lick that face,

when he lets me.

In the cut’s opening

I get a taste of him

from the inside

out, which is all I have

ever wanted,

to be cell-close

to him. Praise the razor’s

overzealous arm;

the ease

with which it finds tenderness

in this man.

NAT TURNER

What do you mean by your copyright?

The right to copy?

THOMAS R. GRAY

Yes, well, the right to publish and distribute, which involves copying necessarily.

NAT

And who can grant such a right?

THOMAS

The copyright office, naturally.

NAT

...

THOMAS

It protects the rights of the man who has done the work.

NAT

And is God not a sufficient witness of our works?

THOMAS

Uh,

No.

KEVIN
I don’t understand anything you’re saying
 
TERESA
I’m sorry this sucked. Sorry. Sorry. I’ve stopped being able to lie. Don’t tear yourself apart over this. There’s a war coming, dude. 
 
KEVIN
What
 
TERESA
There’s a war coming. And I want you to be on the right side. I want you to be strong enough to fight. Remember your roots. You went to a school where you got wilderness training, where you spoke conversational Latin and locked your phone in a safe for four years and rode horses and built igloos and memorized poems while scaling mountains, and you were strong and you were one of us, and now look at you, you’re a pale American soy boy. 
 
KEVIN
A pale what
 
TERESA
Just make a decision not to be weak anymore, and stick to it.
 

VERA: Have I told you about the lesbian who tried to seduce / me?

EMMA: Yes.

VERA: She showed up at the house, saying she has suck a big, whaddayacallit.

EMMA: Clitoris.

VERA: Clitoris, right, and she said it would be terrific, and all that. And I said no thank you, and she went away. Nice woman. Very pretty, actually.

He did it deliberately &

so when the police tracked him down he was

able to explain it so

clearly they had to

agree. Still, they hadn’t done it.

Anyway, he’d checked it out &

it was what they’d suspected,

women! – women just

opened & spilled, there was

nothing special in there after all.