Book spine poem: Microworlds

It’s a few months since I made one of these. So: a new book spine poem.

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‘Microworlds’

Microworlds, a patchwork planet
Solar bones brighter than
A thousand suns.
Gut symmetries collapse,
All fall down,
Vertigo: wide open –
Full catastrophe living.

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Metaphors, mountains, and magic

This post is a mixum-gatherum of bits from books I’ve read over the last while. First up is an arresting passage from ‘Vertigo’ by Joanna Walsh, in her short story collection of the same name:

At the turn of the road, willing the world to continue a little space, there is a man, a woman, and a child. They are not tourists: there are few here. From the outside, the man is greater than the woman, who is greater than the child. The child is brighter than the woman, who is brighter than the man. Of their insides we know nothing, because we cannot understand the words that turn those insides out. I grasp at words in this language with other languages I know, languages other than the one I mostly speak, as though one foreignness could solve another.

I love the idea of using language as a tool not to communicate directly but to unlock another language, like an inoculation.