TANTRA BENSKO
TEN PAGES PRESS
First published by Ten Pages Press
Edited by : Giorgia Pavlidou
the performers are portals
with elaborate
HUGE
masks,
some stone carvings, sudden,
towering, powerful,
like Aztec dancers,
all so beautiful it hurts.
one after another I see:
they are silent,
still,
shown from a moving
perspective.
some of the portals
are unpleasant.
it could be wrong
to go into some of them.
i see scenes inside and know they are bad.
some wear suggestions of heads
of animals, brilliant,
suspended in a spaceless
labyrinth abstract.
i run with a dog on a leash
through a space mysteriously
stable throughout the whole experience,
a place hard to see far in,
which always contains a soft
black spot, between buildings,
an arch, opening out beyond
into your psychic space.
as i run, i unbutton my shirt,
a dubious decision.
an agent is coming, looking for models
at a hotsprings and i must look seductive.
i find the owner of a building next to the hot springs
is a murderer.
in the labyrinth, the performers
are the doors, and the creatures
in the doors.
i am lost, trying to find the water.
and though i am running between
the buildings,
i am really always
in the same place.
the opening of the labyrinth
looms in the background.
a muscular black man
gives me a note that says
No President, No President, No President.
i start looking again to the absent space.
i go through a door into a gypsy room
with glittering clothes, exotic.
then, scene after scene
of the animal heads,
and i try to pick out
which one is
me.
they are all parallel versions
of me. as if photos
spread out like a deck of cards.
me as all the people
the agent is considering as models.
if i can pick out and show him
which one is me, he can decide.
but i don’t regret
not knowing which is me, which mask
i wear.
i hold up a sign for you
to see if you are experiencing this
at the same time. the sign
is actually
a portal.
i go in it, by going away from it back towards myself holding it.
back toward myself holding it
i become two dimensional,
floating.
i encourage you to put on your
equipment that allows
you to see the 2D photo representations
as more 3D, so you can see
which one is me.
my friend shows up in a long black dress,
saying, you’re back.
we are in a labyrinthine dressing room
with lots of mirrors.
i leave through a mirror,
wanting to keep going
into the heart of it all,
through all the performers,
to the minotaur.
as i float through the mirror portal,
i think the core of it must be deep within
myself.
so i should be going back towards me.
so i turn inside out to look inside myself
for my destination.
i come to a scene of you
meditating.
you are wearing an intensely
colorful costume
in an empty room
except for a tremendous mirror
behind you.
and you are surrounded
by altar icons, magical.
i go through the mirror portal
into you
as a royal magician.
what a huge thrashing around
that causes.
it feels good.
the mirror keeps throwing me out
and i have to start over and over.
i wonder
how i know who you are.
i see swirls
of a galaxy of raw energy.
Nothingness
is offered as the key word.
i am back in the labyrinth’s
dressing room,
trying on black panties and undershirt,
briefly.
i enter your dream.
a buff man with short dark hair is there.
then, everything in my field of vision
is covered by red panties.
maybe a privacy thing
to keep me from your dream.
maybe you are dreaming
of sex. i’m sorry
if i am invading.
i don’t know how to get out
of the labyrinth
that is even in your dream.
it feels alive, pulsating
with potential, closed in,
yet with mysterious
dark openings, with sudden
rooms, mirrors, portals.
i can hear you talking to me
about how even though mirrors
are the way in, you don’t like
to visualize yourself.
i hold up a square, large metallic sign
facing you.
the message mirrored back to me
is how i have gone in one direction,
but also, i have split
and gone in another direction
at the same time.
because of my ambivalence,
opening my shirt,
and all the portals i went into.
the places of opening
to dark magic.
luckily, my ambivalence
led me to the good choice too,
where i created a portal
to bring the two futures
together safely,
rescuing myself.
in a labyrinth, we always make wrong choices
and go back and start over.
i begin to see the doors as mirrors,
then as those indian dresses
with tiny mirrors on them.
i know i can go through the mirrors.
the dresses are held up
by a master of illusion.
since he is there, i decide
not to go in that direction.
i try to go into a different
mirrored outfit,
but its owner changes her mind
about me and won’t let me go.
you are hard to visualize.
layered loosely in folds and jumbles
of invisibility, being a stranger to me,
reading this.
then, there is lightening
over a hillside.
there is a child there
who is afraid of everything,
wearing gold velvet brocade shoes.
i hear distant organ music.
you are there. my voice speaks to you
from the room, floating like narration.
BIOGRAPHY
Tantra Bensko is a manuscript editor. She teaches fiction writing online with UCLA Extension Writing Program, Writers.com and Online Writing Academy. Included in her wide variety of courses are Experimental Fiction Writing and Embodied Writing. She published many authors — books through LucidPlay Publishing and shorter works in Exclusive Magazine, which is part of Experimental Writing resource website http://experimentalwriting.weebly.com. She has a few hundred creative writing pieces in magazines, and publishers put out chapbooks and collections. LucidPlay released four psychological suspense novels. The most common theme in her fiction is the heroism of exposing social engineering. She has always wanted to be Max Ernst and his wife. She is a walking Exquisite Corpse. Tantra lives in Berkeley near her son.
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