hmmm what about this:
She was a contortionist sword-swallower and a failure. Her brother, estranged, was a contortionist sword-swallower and strongman with a business, producing bespoke throat bent ironwork.
He'd won prizes. He had a profile in the New Yorker, he was an artist. She was just a performer, touring cross country under a shroud of sawdust and candyfloss.
Each evening she draped herself around a blade, bending with the crowd's ooos. She was a candelabra of cutlasses, a human vane in the night-wind. But no matter how good her act, she was not satisfied. For each time the supple metal righted itself, impressed only with the ghostly slick of her gut.
She billowed and bloomed like a jellyfish, transparent and torpid. Her coiled body a fallow tract, a whorl to nowhere, animated only by the sword. The tent was put up and taken down. The people blew in then out. The blade inserted and withdrawn. Only the taste of metal lingered.
She was a contortionist sword-swallower and a failure. Her brother, estranged, was a contortionist sword-swallower and strongman with a business, producing bespoke throat bent ironwork.
He'd won prizes. He had a profile in the New Yorker, he was an artist. She was just a performer, touring cross country under a shroud of sawdust and candyfloss.
Each evening she draped herself around a blade, bending with the crowd's ooos. She was a candelabra of cutlasses, a human vane in the night-wind. But no matter how good her act, she was not satisfied. For each time the supple metal righted itself, impressed only with the ghostly slick of her gut.
She billowed and bloomed like a jellyfish, transparent and torpid. Her coiled body a fallow tract, a whorl to nowhere, animated only by the sword. The tent was put up and taken down. The people blew in then out. The blade inserted and withdrawn. Only the taste of metal lingered.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson