He who shrinks from the flames will never command Salamanders.
-- Arthur Edward Waite
"One would not make love to a Salamandrine during a sandstorm," wrote Aleister Crowley, anticipating by some sixty years the note of caution that Tarpaulin Sky must attach to the Black Book whose image now burns before you: Dear Reader, banish all received notions of narrative, of language itself. Masquerading as a collection of short stories, Salamandrine is a channeled text, moonchild, unholy offspring of poetry and Loser Occult. Refracting the dread and isolation of contemporary life through a series of formal/generic lenses, producing a distorted, attenuated, spasmatic experience of time, as accompanies motherhood, Salamandrine renders impossible any thinking in terms of conventional temporalities or even causalities, let alone their narrative effects.
Salamandrine is the high magick of art so low it crawls. Like a toddler at a poetry reading. With a taste for achilles heels. Hell-bent on bringing literature to its knees.
EXCERPT FROM SALAMANDRINE
In which my kid proves a hero of the injection. Next stop a wrestly Mercury-mask, stops up the ears, stops up the nose, swims in the blood, sews painful wings onto those baby ankles, but theyll thank you for it. My kids got her own pod of roll-up dolphins in her spangly blood, swimming and sieving in her alien scenes.
After the check-up, I see the doctor in the parking lot. Can she recognize my kid without her chart? I want desperately for my kids face to be recognizable; I wouldnt recognize it myself if it werent tied on. I try to draw the doctors attention to us. I ring the stroller round my car. My kids dingle tires sink deeper into the tar.
*
In which the tar is mud. Girasol tamales, Parish of St. Bavo, Women, Infant and Childrens clinics all stipple-cell all sinking into the mud. No such lug today. Burning bright. Which makes the tar for melting. Which makes a Melchior. Alchemists bauble or philosophers stone stowed on the shelf amid the unused Pampers and summer togs. Salamandrine, my kid
is burning in the back seat. Shit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of two titles with Tarpaulin Sky Press: Nylund, the Sarcographer (2007), and Salamandrine: 8 Gothics. She is also author of four titles from Fence Books: Percussion Grenade, Flet, The Red Bird, and The Commandrine and Other Poems.
Genre: General Fiction
-- Arthur Edward Waite
"One would not make love to a Salamandrine during a sandstorm," wrote Aleister Crowley, anticipating by some sixty years the note of caution that Tarpaulin Sky must attach to the Black Book whose image now burns before you: Dear Reader, banish all received notions of narrative, of language itself. Masquerading as a collection of short stories, Salamandrine is a channeled text, moonchild, unholy offspring of poetry and Loser Occult. Refracting the dread and isolation of contemporary life through a series of formal/generic lenses, producing a distorted, attenuated, spasmatic experience of time, as accompanies motherhood, Salamandrine renders impossible any thinking in terms of conventional temporalities or even causalities, let alone their narrative effects.
Salamandrine is the high magick of art so low it crawls. Like a toddler at a poetry reading. With a taste for achilles heels. Hell-bent on bringing literature to its knees.
EXCERPT FROM SALAMANDRINE
In which my kid proves a hero of the injection. Next stop a wrestly Mercury-mask, stops up the ears, stops up the nose, swims in the blood, sews painful wings onto those baby ankles, but theyll thank you for it. My kids got her own pod of roll-up dolphins in her spangly blood, swimming and sieving in her alien scenes.
After the check-up, I see the doctor in the parking lot. Can she recognize my kid without her chart? I want desperately for my kids face to be recognizable; I wouldnt recognize it myself if it werent tied on. I try to draw the doctors attention to us. I ring the stroller round my car. My kids dingle tires sink deeper into the tar.
*
In which the tar is mud. Girasol tamales, Parish of St. Bavo, Women, Infant and Childrens clinics all stipple-cell all sinking into the mud. No such lug today. Burning bright. Which makes the tar for melting. Which makes a Melchior. Alchemists bauble or philosophers stone stowed on the shelf amid the unused Pampers and summer togs. Salamandrine, my kid
is burning in the back seat. Shit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joyelle McSweeney is the author of two titles with Tarpaulin Sky Press: Nylund, the Sarcographer (2007), and Salamandrine: 8 Gothics. She is also author of four titles from Fence Books: Percussion Grenade, Flet, The Red Bird, and The Commandrine and Other Poems.
Genre: General Fiction
Used availability for Joyelle McSweeney's Salamandrine