Thumbsucker - Jenny Hval, Felicia Atkinson

Come with me

Fall into the wildscape

Reverse the church bells

Swiping in the mud

With two fingers

And one in your mouth, wandering

I was a thumbsucker, what am I now?

I was a thumbsucker, what am I now?

Am I a traveller, was I ever?

Or do I just colour 'round the clear lines?

Do I just turn away from every confrontation?

Biting until bleeding

She says she knows

This is my strange voice

She say she’s close

Once I was a thumbsucker

Doesn’t say to what

Once I was a runaway

The forest is all sorts of forests

Hid in tight places and World War II bunkers

It seems to be adapting itself, she says

Found secret tree huts, spiralling

Alternating between mountains and marshland

A self-harming vampire, she always says

Of the tender kind, she always says

A compensation, she always says

For something too wild, for something too wild

For something too wild, something too wild

For something too wild, for something too wild

In this way

Alternating mouth and thumb

Forest and human

Both transforming

Forest and humans

Producing nothing.

Until

Are equals

I got afraid that I’d dug too deep

Stirred up something in the body

The glands of instinct, fear and desire

Clanking from a distant engine

Iron shafts and idler-wheels

And then there is release

Whatever it is you are doing to yourself

You are always performing some kind of internal construction work

I was a thumbsucker, what am I now

Am I a runaway, was I ever?

It’s all in the wrist

Sketching out the wildscapes

Sucking on the church bells

The hunger of the clappers

Withdrawing word by word

Back into the rabbit hole