The end of the world is nigh. So what? This doesn’t change things. All my life I’ve been wishing to do something important, go down in history and now I know that it’ll never happen. So let the apocalypse come, who cares. Finally something really democratic. Not even the greats of the past ages are safe, everything will disappear from the face of the earth. Pardon, that’s going to disappear too. The Big Crunch, the return to the singularity: few believed that it would really happen.
I was talking about that with a female friend just yesterday.
– I don’t see why we should get desperate. In any case, each one of us would have to die sooner or later.
– You’re insensitive as usual.
– At least we’ll die together – I said, although my love is unrequited.
– You creep me out – she replied, and started chatting with her friends on Facebook.
I remained at her disposal anyway. Shortly thereafter, she ordered me to go and rent all the disaster movies I could find because she would throw a party that night.
They want to overcome the fear of death, I said to myself, by mocking it, laughing at it. It was a good guess: on my return, I find her making out with two guys in skeleton costumes.
– The best is yet to come – she says.
– I’m partying too?
– There’s always the dog.
That was one of her friends. Soon after other people dressed up as the occasion demands – gravediggers, ravens, worms and whatnot – walk in with crates of beer and any kind of commercially available drug.
Moral: there was little interest for the movies and only I and the “dog”, wearing a tombstone costume, watched them, until she left me to participate in an orgy with two skeletons, a coffin and a mausoleum towards the end of the night.
At dawn they had all sunk into comatose sleep, as in one of those music videos that stage the typical post-party morning of the latest pop star. I walked out in the garden and watched the sun rise.
I’m still here now, contemplating the sky. It won’t be long until the end.
Komm, süßer Tod!
Really, that’s what life was? We could do without it, thanks. Adieu.
Maurizio Brancaleoni has been widely published in several journals and anthologies. He has a bilingual blog where he posts literary gems, interviews and translations. The original version of “Who Cares About The End of the World” was first published in 2012 in an anthology of apocalyptic short stories.
Borders
The mother leans against the sad wet strings
We last a long time-holding time in a transparent suitcase
For handles that pierce the skin, bones, blood flow and go away all at the same time
I am not good at this designing at all
I speak to the body I'm dragging along the blank paper
The body they call my mother
A quiet black dress filled with the burst of distant stars
I can't do anything in creative expression classes
As a representative figure of absolute human evil
I draw wires around my mother, around me, around the house
Around the tongue that can't help me anymore
To make something out of swallowed pain
I will never be able to bring back the dead, nor measure your graves
Where does your grave end and mine begin?
Behind the camp there is still an endless field of wires
Hands that outgrow it are just a myth
Souls are always in love with floating
How many times have you tried to teach her to speak?
They will ask the mother, and I will wait
Drawing line by line
Begging her to hug me
Begging her to go back home
The Survivor
The once healthy cell
Has been invaded like hell
The once healthy hair
Has fallen throughout this fair
Like drifting wood in the river afloat
Winter snow on the ground, melt it connotes
Sunlight cascading to the forest floor
Feeling uncertain, thus, you close the door
The strength you have to surpass them all
Unwavering faith will not falter His call
You fought the illness uncalled for
You’re the greatest survivor of them all.
Life
If life is like picking the right song
Choose the one that bangs the gong
To the rhythm of the beat that is in bloom
Like the windy beat of air in a lagoon
Swiftly flowing, the rhythm in your ear
That’s how smooth you want life to appear
Like trees laid into the sunny rays
Field of dancing flowers full of grace
If life is like picking the right song
Choose your band and favorite song
Trials in reality you cannot shun
Yet after the rain the sun will surely shine
Facade
When I met you decades ago
We were young, free and on the go
Uncaring for whatever it might be
My heart throbs for you endlessly
You got my heart from the start
Yet treated me wrong from the day we start
You tricked me with all the lies
It was long enough for me to realized
What we had were all facade
Made most of my days gloomy and sad
My brain unquestionably says No!
But my heart undoubtedly says Go!
Behind the hidden memories
Lies all the troubles and worries
A painful yesterday
Is now a memory far away
Too many years have been wasted
With all the trials busted
Facing all challenges to pursue
Until one day... I’m so over you
Youth of Yesteryears
Those were the budding days
So young & carefree with your ways
All you do is play the race
Until the beaming sun hides its rays
Those were the youthful times
When life doesn’t have to rhyme
When folks’ counsels do not matter
Never sorry for a dreadful scatter
Those were the blossoming years
Shedding pointless tears
Dwelling on wasted years
For some worthless fears
Those were the years gone by
Treasured mem’ries long gone by
Old secret mem’ries gone by
Reminiscing will give you a little cry
Jazira Munding Ismael aka Jazira Mi
A published poet, photo enthusiast, and an aspiring novelist, she is a registered writer/author with the National Book Development Board (NBDB), Philippines. Her passion for writing awakened her curiosity to explore genres like romance, and fantasy, mystery and dystopia.
Her poetry collection entitled “Poems of Life” speaks for itself as life’s intertwined roads are filled with wonders, challenges, both highs and lows. She also has a booklet on marriage vows called “I Do”, both of which, were published by 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing, Philippines.
She regularly lectures and critics poetry writing contests of Poetry Hub, an international online platform of aspiring poets from countries like Nigeria, India, Somalia, Zambia, and its neighboring countries. She has gained notable following on Instagram (My writing Journey- Jazira Mi) as well as in her photography world: Fotografia y Viaje Alrededor.
Under the Skin movie poster featuring Scarlett Johansson
Scarlett Johansson – The Bombshell that haunted screens with body dysmorphia
(Ghost of the Shell – Under the Skin)
By Jaylan Salah
Scarlett Johansson has always been an unreliable narrator of sexuality and femininity in its primitive form. The blonde bombshell of the 50s/60s reincarnated, her breasts and her voluptuous figure, her features that combine sultry coyness and childlike girth have made her a dream girl of the late 90s and early 00s. The actress has admitted lately that this wasn’t the image she wanted to be seen through as an actress, that she was groomed into the blonde bombshell/pretty baby archetype in her earlier acting years. Scarlett defied that, however, through her later career choices, where she became more comfortable in her skin to the extent of shedding it all off.
How Scarlett Johansson became the symbol of heteronormative sexuality and then flipped it upside down
There are two films in which Scarlett plays on the “Scarlett” persona with a mischievous in-your-face rebellion twist: “Under the Skin” and “Ghost in the Shell”. Although the latter might have brought questionable casting choices and criticism for whitewashing reasons, it was -on her part- a brave choice and a bold move to deconstruct her celebrity image.
When Scarlett first appears on screen in “Ghost of the Shell” she is stripping. Everybody anticipates. It’s Scarlett Johansson on the big screen getting naked with flawless skin and lips that have always been marketed as the ultimate cis hetero man’s (and lesbian) dream. Scarlett never fails to drag on hungry onlookers, perverse spectators from behind their laptop screens or in the safe, dark movie theater dreaming of splashing their semen all over her body.
But something else is revealed. Scarlett’s female body is sexless without all the definite features that cause a female to be -arguably- female: no nipples, clitoris, or vulva. It’s a sewn female body without all the openings, but it’s still there to ponder with all its sexual/sexless energy. It’s a female mannequin like the ones found in horror movies such as “Maniac” and “Lights Out”, a sea of genitalia-less female figures displayed and not exposed. This defines Scarlett’s rendition of Motoko or Major Mira Killian, the first full-body cyborg. A human whose brain has been implanted in another body, her sense of abduction is a constant reminder that her presence is in a body where she doesn’t belong. A reminisce on body dysphoria or a hijacking of sorts translates a lot that many people might not be able to express in words.
In multiple scenes of the movie, Scarlett is seen naked, but it’s a form of cocooned nudity, a bare body imprisoned in the confines of gender aesthetics. She is still Scarlett, still described in one of the video titles on YouTube “Being Thirsted Over by Men”. But she redefines what it means to be a woman, and a past sex symbol for all that matters, having all the metrics of the penultimate sexy Hollywood blonde. Scarlett doesn’t dispose of her attractive features for the sake of a role. She’s not Charlize Theron shaving her brows or Nicole Kidman donning a prosthetic nose, but she’s retaining her cool features, her cat-like eyes, and her infamous pout, without a body underneath to complete the wet dream.
In “Ghost in the Shell,” Scarlett plays a character with a gender identity crisis, coming to terms with her body and existence. She questions the link between biological sex and actual gender with her subtle treading on gender lines, being a fully-developed female and refusing to succumb to the gender plethora of femininity. Major Mira Killian is not just a cybernetically modified human but a lost soul, a creature that hovers on the borders of feminine and female, not fully conforming to either.
The idea of owning a body, gendered but non-gendered, becoming but also unbecoming, working the way through gender discovery and dysphoria, is the core of the original “Ghost in the Shell” animated movie. Aside from the A.I. anxieties and the futuristic doom, we are attached to Motoko’s journey across humanity and bodies, identifying with her quest to discover her true self and those around her, in the process though she touches on different themes and pathways that make her distinct, that is her corporal journey as she comes to terms with her bodily restrictions and capabilities.
Body Discomfort, dysmorphia, and depicting gender identity crisis
In “Under the Skin”, Scarlett is a female. She just exists with a skin that she puts on to become more familiar with the planet she plans to invade. She’s not a woman but a female entity that doesn’t conform to presumed ideals of sexualizing that gendered being. The alien is incapable of having sex, almost punished for that by being forced into it. The alien becomes an embodiment of an agender dream. It is a female on the border of gendered expression, without femininity but also defined as such.
It’s easy to dismiss someone’s identification or lack of their body. It’s a question that plagued my mind for years. What is a body? What is a male or female body? My body scared and intrigued me in how it differed from “other” members of the same gender that I am supposed to belong to. When I noticed the quirks and mismatching details, I realized that body dysphoria is not that foreign.
The idea of an imperfect female body begins at a very young age for some girls, and it’s also something that some women struggle with as they grow up. However, the idea of a “weird” female body is something else. There’s always something wrong with this woman: too much hair, dark armpits on fair skin, a mustache that needs constant waxing or painful laser sessions to remove, a weird-looking boob, a vagina buried underneath bushes of coarse hair, a strange-looking face; blemishes, scars, pigmentation, freckles, too many freckles, etc. As someone who has always felt like an alien in their own body, suffering the scrutiny of female peers who might or might not have criticized or pointed out an eccentricity, it was refreshing to watch Scarlett Johansson reject that embodiment of feminine perfection.
What is Under Scarlett’s Skin?
In “Under the Skin”, Scarlett sheds the skin of a sexy female luring people. She harbors on the fringes of the world, wearing a fur coat that creates an allegory to prominent male figures in other cinematic masterpieces -The Driver in Nicholas Winding Refn’s “Drive”- but doesn’t provide proof of consent to being male or female. Scarlett plays an alien, prying on unsuspecting men and feeding them to the void, a place where matter dissolves and shrinks and people are merely energy sources for a more considerable creation. Scarlett’s creature is female underneath, but the escalation to the revelation of the true self also brings up how gender is a barrier in people’s perceptions of them and how universal expectations of them hinder their emotional, physical, and actual growth in an accepting world. Scarlett again plays on the fetishized version of her. She is nude without a sexual undertone. She sheds the skin that has usurped her all of her life, to reveal the truth, a rather female but in a version that heteronormativity would never understand.
What does it take to be a woman? And how does one accomplish so? The freak reaction of the sexual predator throws shade at the culture of objectifying women, like Scarlett, or setting definitions for femininity and gendered existence where a woman would not feel safe to become who she chooses to become. And in the scary scene at the end, Scarlett’s reality is burned. The creature is burned alive and it’s as if people are burning the mere thought of her existence. But in reality, Scarlett is burning that skin, her sexualized younger self is given the final treatment, buried deep underneath the new woman who exists as beautiful, sexy, or even quirky and funny as she chooses to be, but further from the old self as one could expect. And to depict gender dysphoria using her old “very archaic and normative” self as a backdrop to a shifting world in terms of gender and sexuality is not only an act of liberation but a rebellion against the ideal femininity trope which could be a deicide in progress.
SAN GIUSTO
Trieste, march 2019.
He put his arm around my shoulders and led me through the small door to Bottega del Nonno
- La Veglia di Finnegan, se ne hai una?
Then we walked along one of the narrow streets towards the castle of San Giusto.
He was holding a book in his right hand all the time, his veins were swollen,
And he would hold my forearm with his left when we were climbing.
I felt so safe, as if the Lord had placed all the power in his hands.
(Actually, this could be a poem about his hands.
How I loved his hands!)
"I am forever trapped, walking along the river, always returning to the castle..." – he quoted.
- That life until now was a sketch drawn with a graphite pencil, the fragments of which we will
be able to erase, and what is inside us are colors. Let's start painting!
I looked for a moment at the sidewalks where the weeds had grown, and then at his big eyes where
the darkness had grown.
The wind opened around us,
The guards fell asleep long ago,
The walls grew like giants,
Distant history played with our depths,
And it seemed insignificant to us
Compared to this one that is just starting.
Azemina Krehić was born on October 14, 1992 in Metković, Republic of Croatia.
Winner of several international awards for poetry, including:
Award of university professors in Trieste, 2019.,
„Mak Dizdar“ award, 2020.
Award of the Publishing Foundation of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2021.
„Fra Martin Nedić“ Award, 2022.
She is represented in several international anthologies of poetry.
