Spiney Senses
a Saturday morning poem +
This week we have a updated format to try out, it’s the same content as before: an original poem, a reading/reference list, artist highlight, or otherwise art historical-y context of the work. This hopefully illuminates connections and insights into how and why I make these poems.
Enjoy my thoughts in a “letters” form. A bit more personal, hopefully, and a lot less taxing in terms of list-making and data-entry purgatory feelings. We hates it, we do enough inventory elsewhere.
Look out below,
M. I. Kast
Spiney Senses by M. I. Kast
The spider in my spine is Serpentine and curved. It cannot straighten and It cares not to budge; It only stands to crawl again, Away from what it feels too near. And often times, most of their time, What is beyond too far oblivious to fear. To pray: If neither snake nor spider Should live within my spine Then neither shall be found. To know: Their logic and instincts, Though surviving and sound, Cannot live within me as they live on the ground.
To all my darling and decaying,
This week’s featured work by Hitomi Murakami, originally posted in a note from pmamtraveller. “Luminous despair” struck me in such a way that I, with extraordinary and excited sincerity, commented on the note in the same fashion. And while a little embarrassed at the overt show of enthusiasm, it feeling suddenly like a risk, I still made the poem. Thank you for the inspiration this week from your weeks past note.
I finished up reading some wonderful titles recently:
Berserk (Omnibus 7) I am really enjoying the ‘Conviction Arc,’ I do love a religious zealot and the plentiful egg iconography—what can I say other than whatever ritual is passed off as holy versus blasphemous on this Lord’s day? I’ll pray over it with over easy eggs. I always consume Berserk in bed, starting around lunch time after a heavy meal. I wouldn’t be getting up any time soon, except when absolutely necessary.
Spores of Doom (an anthology on the “sporror” subgenre) edited by Aaron Worth is just good, there is no reason not to introduce yourself to the British Library’s Tales of the Weird Collection. I have already started a separate title in this series centering “Women of the Weird” in Queens of the Abyss. Unless weird is not what you’re into, in which case, I must ask: are you lost? Awfully weird to be reading these letters, dear. I took this book everywhere; I read it at work, at home, and in my bed at all hours.
Bog Wife by Kay Chronister is a gothic eco-horror set in West Virginia with welcomed nuance and perspective on generational trauma and enmeshed family units. The cadence is of note here. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m cosplaying old timelines through my usual reading material, or if it felt necessarily and eerily sludge-y. I’m not particularly partial to either reasoning. I read this entirely in bed, but at all hours.
End of titles completed.
Titles circulating:
I did pick back up Finding Atlantis, our non fiction on Mr. Olaf Rudbeck. He thought Atlantis was in Sweden, wrote a tome, lost it in a fire. He did discover the lymphatic system at the meat market and was certainly a Renaissance man, but more certainly was he was a touch obsessive. We’re making our way through this one slowly, it was the last book I was talking about with my grandfather before he passed. I read this earliest in the morning, at home.
Birds of America is a truly phenomenal find, Lorrie Moore needs no help from me to sing her praises like a wistful titmouse, but the vignettes she creates are stark, present, and funny, ruthless and distinct. It’s a brutal grace I can really appreciate. I read this at work before my shift starts, often sitting on top of bags of unprocessed green coffee beans. I will be sad when she’s (the book) gone; she’s (the book) dwindling already.
Vagabond is somewhere in the ethers, I just haven’t wanted to sit down for that long after the last time. I’m just coming off of that Berserk binge.
Lastly, but not least-ly at all, I started North Woods by Daniel Mason. I’m only just at the shoreline of this title, but I can tell its waters will be newly satisfying. I read this in bed, before bed. I’ve also not forgotten Ms. Nemirovsky and her book of short stories, nor Mr. Benois and his wonderful paintings. The season just took a turn and I’m not sure where they fit into my day, or Spring, for that matter. Maybe Summer.
Stay tuned for the Summer reading list, it will be more. I’m just warming up.
In other news, my husband and I have been playing Resident Evil to get ready to play RE: Requiem as well as the newly announced remake of RE: Code Veronica. Shout out to Geoff Keighley’s twice a year birthday (Summer Games Fest/Game Awards) that features 2 games you might be interested in, a fidgeting Hideo Kojima, and heaps of anime slop. I say that with love, though it may not seem that way.
We started up with RE: Biohazard. To clarify, by ‘we’ it is the royal ‘we,’ but in this case I’m not being clever, per say, but more saying clearly that my husband is playing while I am sitting in the bed watching actively and pointing out puzzle points. Because that’s what love is and playing to one’s strengths, literally.
We both agree that the first 6 hours of RE: Biohazard are some of the best hours the genre has to offer. It is truly terrifying. The texture and feel of terror in the game is matched by weave of the Baker Family and their gator and mold laden land. It was deeply disgusting in a satisfying way. The only let down being when you are eventually removed from one area to another, sterilizing a bit of the terror and bringing the volume level inadvertently up on the brightness. Perhaps it would have been too much of a good gross thing? It doesn’t really matter. We enjoyed it.
Have a good week and wreak havoc,
M. I. Kast