Two Empires (Original Post) When the last of the servants had left, bearing empty plates and bowls to the kitchens eight levels above, Orrenkhendis scanned the room for any remaining people and unrolled the parchment. It covered most of the table, brightly coloured, highly detailed. He placed an iron triangle on the map, and sat [...]
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Tagged: fiction
When the last of the servants had left, bearing empty plates and bowls to the kitchens eight levels above, Orrenkhendis scanned the room one last time before unrolling the parchment. Spread out, it covered most of the table, brightly coloured, intricately detailed. He placed an iron triangle on the map, and sat back. “We’re ready [...]
Categories: main
Tagged: fiction
“Do you know what this is?” the curate asked as they circled the tree, their horses pulling strangely at the reins as if willing their riders to move away. One of the acolytes nodded. “From the Book of Ancestors,” he said. “One of Scylgrogh’s trees.” The curate pulled to a halt. “Yes,” he replied. “Or [...]
Categories: main
Tagged: fiction
Then again yesterday you were a ship sailing east, out of sight, and when you crested the horizon I threw myself into the sea. Three months later a broken fever up the flue and I was a soft skeleton, all cartilage and fluid tied four-corners to the earth, where my thrashings had lashed ropes round [...]
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Tagged: poetry
It’s odd how three years and three hundred miles will turn anything on its ear. Does it really matter how enjambed your life has become when you sizzle with hunger and cold? Fractured world takes another turn round the pole, round and round the pole, and you have finally accepted the flush and cash like [...]
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Tagged: poetry
They are jostling for position in the sky, ships obsidian against slate, onyx against ochre, iron against iron. Familiar bubbling unease at season change and drain and funnel away: paramnesia or deja vu or perhaps the schizophrenic reality manifesting as black ships in the sky: it is not long now, not long till the disease [...]
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Tagged: poetry
I remember the red wall in painted stone, chipped and migrating westerly to nightfall, windward, littered like yesterday’s quarrels had struck and bounced and blown away. Chiseled jaw of the earth jutting upward, you always told me it was the sun, it was the upthrust elbow or shoulder. Ribald peat cursing at every step and [...]
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Tagged: poetry
When you were born there was a rupture in what makes the world the world: it began emptying itself on itself like a bayoneted mercenary, and with the uncomprehending horror of intestines coiled and slippery between your fingers, your fingers slackened. We lost you for five minutes, and we still don’t know where you were. [...]
Categories: main
Tagged: poetry