Torsade Literary Space The Culture (poem)
The Culture We are important Our three-letter alphabet Constructs our limited language The gravitational center Draws our attention-seeking message The message is I am important Yet you don’t know me On an oxbow The current passes A fallen tree, submerged At a cross-angle green, murky brown Depths, hot from the […]
Bones and Claws (poem)
Bones and Claws “To the living we owe some consideration,” Voltaire said, “to the dead Only the truth.” If only the lid stayed on Some carcass buried in an old tin can Might gas a little The sides might swell and split It’s hard to tell Whether it will blow or vent […]
Beauty (poem)
Beauty I know more than I have learned Others whom I fear Are kin to me and bear my colors we are broken one by one from safe allées among tall trunks Down through resined crowns the wind raises pale hair on our bare arms I stand again at the shore […]
The Comfrey Plant (poem)
The Comfrey Plant The comfrey plant has rooted in And can’t be rooted out Some adventitious pioneering Groping severed bit Might upend the foundation Can we be rid of it? An oily glow of truth Lovely virtue no one loves You would rather see buried deep Something not worth living […]
Give Away the Key (poem)
Give Away the Key Let your inside be your outside Inside Are you wedged like an orange, or Do you spill seeds like a pomegranate Are you bored out like a lock that catches Banged out like a short order Is your mind troubled Are you a clever puzzle solver Cleverness […]
Catastrophe (part fifty)
Jean Hess La Catastrophe de la Martinique (part fifty) On the 9th, we resumed the rescue. At 11:30, we were moored before the cove of Belleville, 200 meters from land. A movement underwater occurred. Bubbles, swirls, turbulence. The boat carried three times around its anchor. Pods of […]
My Blog Week: November 19 to November 25
All the Latest from Torsade! This week, a couple of samples reissued from the poem-story Haunt of Thieves, and one newly edited Yoharie episode, with Valentine’s misfit adventures in the workplace. My Blog Week: […]
The Wayfarer (poem)
The Wayfarer Where miles-long grow embattled limbs Above the sea, salt-hardened, east-laden Shading pathways wound through sand and scoured stone Each stone an anvil shape, each tangled crown Untossed by wind The wayfarer, led in hunger by a ghost Stares aloft to see a figure clad in spider webs Rigid with […]
Haunt of Thieves (part three)
Haunt of Thieves Part Three Only now the river Bedhokan She whose flowing waters Gain in strength and claim (For there is no answer to her whim; in their season, the iron clouds will rain) a goddess’s Authority to shape the land She cannot in her course be checked by laws […]
Yoharie (part eight)
Yoharie Valentine (part eight) He smiled at a woman holding tongs over the baked potatoes. There was always a puny spud, a runt showcased in its foil wrap, and Val, thinking of the food they threw out, wondered why. Maybe for calories. Marketing ideas from Plenty House HQ […]