Once, I took a seminar on how the Inca folded dust.
No shortcuts. We spent ten years working the wick.
It was like a grammar, but with corn silk and a syntax
of husks. The yard is thick with plastic feathers again,
circles, and songs about graphs. They did what they
could with what little they had, braided dolls and dice
gone feral. Convenience stores were centuries away.
We would wait, folding dust into a grand provocation
and slowly slumping towards the center of the flame.
The moon just hung there, as in judgement. Boredom
is becoming, and we are exactly what we feared we’d
be. I think of you dancing by the dump, and that wet
heat that calls here home. The overwhelming thrum
of running water, a fevered chant collecting in a tidal
pool of steam. Lovely the way all of the ash falls flat
and gathers near the corn. It’s this other way of rain.
Jeffrey Little | Blood is Semantics
Contents | Mudlark No. 77 (2024)