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28.09: The Liturgy
Liturgy for the Answers That Yield More Questions(for the pacing, the waking, the silent photographs) I. The Floor That Knows Your FootstepsYou have worn a path in the carpet.Back and forth,as if the fibres might rearrange themselvesinto a confessionif you walk them long enough. But they do not. The carpet only holds the shape of…
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27.09 The Copse
The Copse “Copse,” whispered the small barefoot boy. “Where?” His friend looked about. “I don’t see any cops.” “Copse. Trees. Limbs. Great for fishing poles.” And so they went about bending and twisting and tugging at long, straight limbs until two finally gave up and broke into their hands, while the sun climbed to noon…
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The Old Woman With No Cat
The Keyboard Chaise Lounge(Or: A Feline Declaration of Workspace Sovereignty) The cat is stretched across the keyboard,full length,tail draped over the escape key,one paw resting softly on the space bar,as if he owns it, which, in his mind, he does. The Old Woman peers over the top of her knitting,needles paused,skepticism etched in her forehead.…
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2609: Everywhere Poems
Cladoptosis it draws itself inside from out, the oak sheds a limb beside the greenhouse. Everywhere Poems don’t have a subject. They have a starting point and follow wherever attention leads. It’s — go for a walk and see where you end up. Some images created with Midjourney; all writing is my own original work.©Misky…
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Ten Things of Thankful
I. Archives Thankful for moments when centuries condense into a single instant, and full circle becomes something almost physical. This week, I stood before a flame-scorched sixteenth-century copy of Le Grand Herbier en Françoys, and for a moment, history was no longer behind glass. This image is from the Internet Archive as photography was not…
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2309: A Six — SSC&B Alcove
Strikethrough a book called “Le Grand Herbier en Françoys” I am wearing time’s dust skin here: this is Montpellier University Library Archive, and beyond the tinted glass lies a flame-singed copy of Le Grand Herbier en Françoys — a sixteenth-century root-system of human knowing — it has brought me full circle, and something in me goes very still grows very…
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2209: Dead Men Don’t Drown
Dead Men Don’t Drown: #7 (catch-up with all episodes here) Dead Men Don’t Drown When I tell the volunteer that Jacob Macleod was my grandfather, her face changes by the smallest degree, not surprise exactly, but the expression of a woman who has just heard a floorboard answer back. She does not ask whether I…
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2209: The Liturgy
Liturgy number 07 Dead Men Don’t Drown “Liturgy for the Sea That Refused”(for the man who became paper, and the wave that said no) I. The Reduction of a Man to PaperThey gave you a file.Not a body.Not a burial.Not the salt-scoured bonesthe sea should have surrenderedafter the proper amount of grieving. They gave you…
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The Old Woman With No Cat
The Birthday Surprise(Or: A Cat’s Guide to Celebrating Humans) The Old Woman wakes to find the kitchen transformed.Streamers (chewed, slightly).Balloons (deflated, mostly).And the cat, perched on the table,wearing a paper crown he clearly made himself(it says “KING KNUT” with a drawingof a sardine where the jewel should be). “Happy birthday,” he announces.“I have planned everything.You…
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Ten Things of Thankful
I. Faith in all its universal varied forms, and for friends who hold one not higher than another. There is something deeply civilised in making room for reverence without turning it into a contest. II. Thankful for gargoyles — gloriously grotesque, beautifully expressive, and still managing to communicate across the centuries. Some faces simply refuse…
