Category: Liturgy
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0903: The Liturgy

Liturgy for the Weaving City(for Lyon, 1834, where silk and blood ran together) I. The DeclarationThis is not riot.This is declaration. Men, women, children —children thin as breath,tear-streaked, sharp-elbowed,forcing through the crowdfor one lungful of air,one moment of being countedamong the living. They carry no weapons.They carry themselves: hollow cheeks,empty hands,that terrible refusalto die quietly.…
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0203: The Looms Liturgy

Liturgy for the Looms That Never Stop(Lyon, 1834, where silk costs more than children) I. The Sound That Never EndsIt begins before dawn and continues after.The clack clack clack of wooden shuttlesthrowing thread, catching thread,weaving fabric that will never warmthe hands that made it. All day. All night. Every day.The looms do not rest.They cannot…
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2302: The Liturgy of Light

Part 3, Liturgy for the Light That Was Not Ours(One border that’s only another) I. The Carriage as CrucibleThe wheels sang agony in vowels.Every jolt a verdict, every rut a reckoning.We counted time by froth at the horses’ mouths,in the shudder of their ribs.Safety was Lyon, we whispered to ourselves,the lie turning prayer by repetition.…
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1602: The Liturgy

Liturgy for Those Who Burned Their Names to Stay Alive(for the ones who fled too late) I. The First Mistake of BelievingYou thought the river would wash you clean.You thought the new tonguewould taste sweeter in your mouth. That the accent you couldn’t shedwould be mistaken for poetry,not origin. But fear travels without papers.It crossed…
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0902: The Liturgy

Liturgy for the Provisional Passport (a hymn for the unmoored and ink-stamped, waiting) I. The Arrival Without WelcomeThe quay,it tolerates you.Coal-smoke and old salt.A lamp hissing in the rainan unwilling guard.You step from the paddle-wheeler’s pitchonto stone that has forgotten how to welcome.This is not a border crossed,but a threshold endured. II. The Surrender of…
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0202: Liturgy of Unmasking of a Beach

Liturgy: The Unmasking of a Beach (Or: Where Water Meets the Wound) Note: This week, I am trying something completely different with my Six. Not a six sentence story (as usual) but the (anthropomorphic) psychological effects of storm-driven tides on a local beach. I. The Withdrawal of the SeaThe tide does not come to cleanse.It…
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2601: The Liturgy for the Watching People

Liturgy for the Window Vigil I. The Geometry of WitnessingA window is a frame.Not for art,but for the ordinary.We think we are looking out,but we are really looking in. Into the small, sudden theatre of endings.Where medics close a defibrillatorlike a book whose final lineno one wants to read aloud. II. Of DistanceWhat we see…
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1201: The Voice, A Six Liturgy

A Liturgy for the Hollow & the Heel The Invocation This is the hook on the polished stool,the calling of lacquered lightand murmuring ghosts. This is not emptiness,this is a chamber.The Bistro.The Stiletto.The Anchor.The Hook of the Night. The Invented Whisper. Of Anchors and Architecture This is sacred geometry.This is waiting.The black heel,the spike of…
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05.01: A Liturgy for a Bubble

A Liturgy for the Bubble in a Current Once upon a time We gathered at water’s edge,in a jacuzzi between the spokenand the dissolved. We knew when a metaphor was not a metaphor,but a bubble wearing a skin of air, and we spoke to the Brief Republic,the Spinning Borders,the diamond thinning to memory.We called it…
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16 Dec: Riverbraid – The Liturgy

The Liturgy for Riverbraid (the water that listens) I. The Carrier of TimeNot emerald. Not jade.But river-green — dark as silt and shadow.It carries storieswithout speaking them aloud,shifting with the light:like memory surfacing,then sinking again. Riverbraid does not rushto reveal itself. II. Of Discipline and AttentionThis is not passive watching —it is presence without interference.…