Aase Berg
In the Heart of the Guinea Pig Darkness
The gorge is swarming with guinea pigs. They crawl on each other like spiders: here in the gorge, here in the stack, here in the heart of the guinea-pig darkness. The gorge is swarming with guinea pigs, and we run, you and I, with your soft wax skin and our love. We run in the tunnels and the rumbling water chases us in a wave of guinea pigs rolling against each other. Jupiter hangs heavy and cruel up there in the firmament, and nervespies lurk behind every evil corner. Guinea pigs are swarming. They are born, they hatch, out of caves and holes. The guinea pigs are swarming and crawling around on the gigantic guinea-pig queen's sensitive, swollen egg-white body. She gives birth and groans, she moans and bleeds. Everywhere the membranes, everywhere their bloated puffbellies. We run with the heart in the tunnel, you and I, while nervous systems break down behind us, while the amniotic fluid surges in the pumping, pulsing chasm. Rotting acids and guinea-pig lymph are streaming yes streaming down the walls. Guinea pigs are thronging. Here they come and get us! Now they're opening us up, now they're swallowing us with their pink flesh organs. Now I love you and now I fear you, and now I finally roll out your guinea-pig body on the baking sheet. And you lean back and let your skin grow into the stinking cell plasma of the guinea-pig wall, my beautiful traitor, and the guinea pigs swarm all the way into the depth of your treacherous guinea-pig organism.
Translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson