Dossier
I.
The red thread of fate is not breakable
But it can, as any fiber, be mistreated
Untangle, but tension is your duty—
No path can be found with too much slack
Too tight and you are too close to the Other
Bound twisting and flailing together.
Our thread is taut with a gentle give
Echoes move down its length
Messages
The pendulum of days sparkling then dull
Doesn’t disrupt our tide pool
Even as its tip swipes the surface
Razing suspirious utterances from the bottom
‘Lay down your arms and
Go into the mist. Let Eros battle certainty
And hope that he wins.’
Keratin spins the world’s webs
Swirls in horns and hooves, grows all the
Frail protections we still have
To find a loose thread, read woven words
Basketed grass and knots in swept-up hair – Incan threads
History in filaments and geoglyphs
Victorian hair-lace, flax and chainmail
Look for a fissure or a duck feather to pull apart.
II.
Water– The first known vending machine created in the first century dispensed holy water.
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Concrete– A magical binder made using hydraulics which, mixed sometimes with ash, built well-known buildings in ancient cities like the Pantheon, the world’s largest concrete dome.
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Gems– From Mount Analogue: A Novel of Symbolically Authentic Non-Euclidean Adventures in Mountain Climbing– ‘One finds here, very rarely in the low lying areas, more frequently as one goes farther up, a clear and extremely hard stone that is spherical and varies in size—a kind of crystal, but a curved crystal, something extraordinary and unknown on the rest of the planet. Among the French of Port-des-Singes, it is called peradam.’
–
Stone fruit– The Nimrod Expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton set out to reach the South Pole in 1907. Limited by the number of ponies only four men set out for the pole. Socks, the last pony, fell down a crevasse with fifty days to go. With dysentery and dwindling food the party marched on foot, growing lost in delirium. Finally they came upon a depot with a supply of gourmet delicacies as if they had died and ascended. Their feast was ‘Carlsbad plums, eggs, cakes, plum pudding, gingerbread and crystallised fruit.’
–
Sea astrolabe– Ancient astronomical instrument used on ships in high winds and waters to navigate by the stars. Crossing the Atlantic in the 17th century took several months by sail. After steam engines it took half a month. Now it can be crossed in under a day.
III.
Crouching like animal, he is
Rolling green lengths of dusty shingles
Chalky claws curved like stone buttresses
Weathered bat-wings casting tent shadows
An earthquake rumble from his throat
His vehicular middle heaves and contracts
Swinging chain on hollow hide-wall
And hot wet asphalt rains from his beak
He is still, looking out across the field
Waiting for someone all in searing metal
To end his days of gold-belled trinkets
And enamel-patterned vases and old lamps
Rolling around in his cavernous urn
A man to end his hunger not by sating it
But by slashing his stuccoed stomach
And freeing the ticking clock.
Egg
In the luxe satin nest of bunched and bundled sheets, she and I
discussed sea anemones and having children, maybe.
We were twenty-four— and as we spoke
all four corners of the bed sheets rose and came together
as if the bed were strung up like a drawstring purse
on a spider’s thread suspended from the ceiling.
We rattled together like two coins and settled cocooned,
a sack of girls bursting with gossip and visions,
humming with excitement for the big full years.
Lucy was exorcizing something upstairs and vacuuming, maybe
chanting. And when she finished,
carried in three flutes of champagne the size of my little finger, so small
we couldn’t stop laughing, with tomatoes and vines on the side. A glass
broke— and I found out a glass broken by accident is not so bad as a
replacement glass I didn’t want that doesn’t match.
Eva is a writer from Pennsylvania who lives in Hudson, NY. She writes fiction, essays, and poetry informed by interdisciplinary research. Her work has appeared in literary and political journals, and she is currently working on a novel. She can be found online at @fangedneurotica.