Hands not working, so I poured my art into writing, each word turned, charged, tasted, sniffed, sequences laid out in line and prised apart again, ever so slowly, until tiny, concise feats of beauty emerged. SUPINELY SUBLIMELY started life as a mini-blog and now it’s a book! Material existence matters…
Here’s how it begins:
Textling #1
When the pain goes I half suppose my flesh marked, transformed. A growth of lichen, say, with its warm turmeric tint; a layer of cool, silvery fish-scales; traces of the glacial burn of chain-mail melting into skin. Best of all a delicate, graceful articulation of relief on the site of its worst excesses: once the sharp, piercing jolts give over to prickling, tingling sensations (as if the top of my skull were open or at least porous), the tiniest, downiest feathers could unfurl in the round, a bit like a peacock’s crest – thin stalks topped with trembling blowballs.
But there is nothing, not a wound, not a bruise, not even the flushed tone of a limb pressed against the mirror, straining elsewhere.
You can order SUPINELY, SUBLIMELY directly from Palewell Press. Or here, if you're in the US. Enjoy!
