Mindful | City in Shambles by Kim Suttell
Stephanie Sushko | Octopus Limbs
In bookstores there’s a section at the back where they
put all the books about Being, it will be beyond History,
past the normal Biographies with titles like songs,
right before the obscure instruction manuals that warn that
every misstep leads to death.
“Being Her,” “Being Him”; these are available to you at any
time, all black and white sweating-eyed cover portrait, and
though all they truly indicate is laziness with titles, inadvertently
they promise a world-changing transmutation of self. Do you
know that all you’ll find inside is the same old place of birth,
struggle, marriage, spawning, death, the same
old waving about in blue-black water? Of course you do,
it’s standard to present existence as sum rather than
sensation; maybe that’s why the section sits untouched, each
surfeit possibility compressing itself as though between rocks,
brains blinking like lights beyond the reach of sonar.
All this
brought on by octopus limbs, learning that each feels the world
like a separate intelligent tongue, that scientists and philosophers
close their eyes to imagine how it would feel to be soft
and fragmented. Ironic, yes? “Being
You,” “Being Me”; can you see all these bound together into one
twitching volume, one slick, gyrating body that escapes the cage
at night, climbs down through a drain
into the Pacific? Close your eyes, let the
words, dates, names
bleed back into ink; rediscover what it is,
for a while, to think with all parts, to sway
with something else’s motion.
put all the books about Being, it will be beyond History,
past the normal Biographies with titles like songs,
right before the obscure instruction manuals that warn that
every misstep leads to death.
“Being Her,” “Being Him”; these are available to you at any
time, all black and white sweating-eyed cover portrait, and
though all they truly indicate is laziness with titles, inadvertently
they promise a world-changing transmutation of self. Do you
know that all you’ll find inside is the same old place of birth,
struggle, marriage, spawning, death, the same
old waving about in blue-black water? Of course you do,
it’s standard to present existence as sum rather than
sensation; maybe that’s why the section sits untouched, each
surfeit possibility compressing itself as though between rocks,
brains blinking like lights beyond the reach of sonar.
All this
brought on by octopus limbs, learning that each feels the world
like a separate intelligent tongue, that scientists and philosophers
close their eyes to imagine how it would feel to be soft
and fragmented. Ironic, yes? “Being
You,” “Being Me”; can you see all these bound together into one
twitching volume, one slick, gyrating body that escapes the cage
at night, climbs down through a drain
into the Pacific? Close your eyes, let the
words, dates, names
bleed back into ink; rediscover what it is,
for a while, to think with all parts, to sway
with something else’s motion.
Stephanie Sushko is a writer living in Ontario, Canada. She has won local awards for poetry and fiction, and has previously had work published in Literary Orphans, Cleaning up Glitter, New Note Poetry, Quibble, and Slippery Elm, and Poetry South. Website: https://stephaniesushko.wixsite.com/fictionandpoetry
Kim Suttell is a collagist just emerging from a career in bureaucracy and spreadsheets. Paper, as her medium, speaks in torn edges, subtle curls, and tiny glimpses of previous use. The grid template references both quilts and ledgers, places where individual pieces must interact to create a new whole. It is the point to limit the format so that color, texture, and fragmentary images make their own movement and meaning.
Instagram: Page48paperart
Instagram: Page48paperart
