Testing The Site
Winning Entry by Babybell
I test it every day, every hour. The way it responds to sound, light, trauma. The taste of food and sadness. The smell of wine and insincerity. Traffic and souls breaking. Sometimes, red is the colour of him leaving, sometimes rust. Scraping noises can initiate childhood, while buttery textures press heavily on the most unwanted parts of time. All these hours, these responses, these causes. Cores. These sharp cores of memory, reaction. This core is like the core of a fruit, but sweeter, stronger, deeper - distressingly - and shimmers in the gold of night. It goes like this:
suffer in pools of dim light
or flashing darkness
See how it works? I test it every day, every hour. This machine inside that can't be a machine because how can something industrial feel like stars with scalpels set on fire that twist maniacally through every organ with flesh still intact? How am I intact? They say it's the brain so why do I feel it
here and
here and
here?
Songs play at 2am in venues lit with dreams. Dreams are an accelerant. They light the starry sky of consciousness. They accelerate. People rust in private places. I am a person. I am a place. The site is not being tested, it is being lived.
The tests are not tests. They are in-breaths of lash curls and coffee dates. Splinters of sleep and corners of a sentence I'll never recall. You can't test something so unstable.
At 22:37, I feel alive. All these perfect syllables.
suffer in pools of dim light
or flashing darkness
See how it works? I test it every day, every hour. This machine inside that can't be a machine because how can something industrial feel like stars with scalpels set on fire that twist maniacally through every organ with flesh still intact? How am I intact? They say it's the brain so why do I feel it
here and
here and
here?
Songs play at 2am in venues lit with dreams. Dreams are an accelerant. They light the starry sky of consciousness. They accelerate. People rust in private places. I am a person. I am a place. The site is not being tested, it is being lived.
The tests are not tests. They are in-breaths of lash curls and coffee dates. Splinters of sleep and corners of a sentence I'll never recall. You can't test something so unstable.
At 22:37, I feel alive. All these perfect syllables.
Featured Entry by writerSZUNHODRJH
From before he was born; stretching, pushing against, folding himself up, testing the site, the parameters, the womb encasing him, the body.
He stretched, spine uncoiled, arms hung low with heavy hands, now pushing against horizons.
Occupying a body, both internal and external space, muscles and arms, organs, a face To have control and not; heart beating in his sleep, racing as he runs; rhythmically and then irregular. A gash is felt across his hand, tumours and diseases grow pain free.
His body ages, its gorgeous youth -- its wealth, wilts. The body becomes merely functional, to move things from one place to another, a dry mouth to rearrange all the words that he has already said.
How do you test this site? How can you stretch your body beyond your height? Think thoughts wider than the dimensions of a heavy brain? Skyscrapers, taller than giants on the shoulders on giants. Dwarfed, unable even clean the windows of such a nauseating unnatural height.
Limited, his body cannot carry him across distance or water, limited in his inability to exist alone, his inability of photosynthesis. Not sure if evolution has started to regress. His weakened immune system, the promise of old age accompanied with rising tides, levels of dementia.
How can he fulfil, make the best of this body and place, this site? Is there a way to feel the landscape? To feel the body. A kind of irony, only being able to feel the body through the body. Other bodies through his body all sensations through the body. He only knows the feeling of a rock through the feeling from skin, the feeling from skin, through the nervous system. Something calming about the limitation of the site. If cracked, unhinged, he fears the infinity that would ensue.
He stretched, spine uncoiled, arms hung low with heavy hands, now pushing against horizons.
Occupying a body, both internal and external space, muscles and arms, organs, a face To have control and not; heart beating in his sleep, racing as he runs; rhythmically and then irregular. A gash is felt across his hand, tumours and diseases grow pain free.
His body ages, its gorgeous youth -- its wealth, wilts. The body becomes merely functional, to move things from one place to another, a dry mouth to rearrange all the words that he has already said.
How do you test this site? How can you stretch your body beyond your height? Think thoughts wider than the dimensions of a heavy brain? Skyscrapers, taller than giants on the shoulders on giants. Dwarfed, unable even clean the windows of such a nauseating unnatural height.
Limited, his body cannot carry him across distance or water, limited in his inability to exist alone, his inability of photosynthesis. Not sure if evolution has started to regress. His weakened immune system, the promise of old age accompanied with rising tides, levels of dementia.
How can he fulfil, make the best of this body and place, this site? Is there a way to feel the landscape? To feel the body. A kind of irony, only being able to feel the body through the body. Other bodies through his body all sensations through the body. He only knows the feeling of a rock through the feeling from skin, the feeling from skin, through the nervous system. Something calming about the limitation of the site. If cracked, unhinged, he fears the infinity that would ensue.
Featured Entry by Cat Chase Tail
TESTING THE SITE
Hushed mutters as the wise woman arrived
Head in antler helmet, wrapped in rags of
Hare skins, feet leather-clad,
The crowd settled and stared
She gestured and a brand of ash,
Smoking and gleaming red in the glooming dusk,
Was passed to her hand
Streaming a line of smoke behind
She hunched, and silence spread
As she huffed breath on the ember, and sparks
Flew from her fingers: white-gold first, then amber,
Scarlet, violet, grass-green fire
That whirled and twisted thrice around her,
Probed the grassy flattened heathers
Tested, tasted, hither-thither
Sought for magic in the rain-damp meadows
Testing the site for spirits
Testing for gods and goblins
(The old farm withered so the family'd moved
To the heathery hills by the gushing river)
The sparks settled and the field fell to dark
But one spark, emerald-bright, sputtered
And the ground shivered, opening dark
A woman’s pallid face peered from the earth
The crowd gasped, but the wise woman stilled
Them with a wave and signalled a huntsman
To approach, a clutch of pheasants by the throat;
She seized one and flicked a blade from her rags
Slashing the dead bird and splattering blood
To the night-blackening grass
She bowed, murmuring in the tongue of the dead
To the peering lady in the earth
The woman within blinked assent, vanished,
And the turfs sealed. The wise woman sighed,
Staggered slightly and steadied herself
The huntsman rushed to spill a cup of water on her
Bloodied fingers and then
She pointed to the soil and spoke:
‘One sleeps here who would not be woke,
Spill blood each new moon and her wrath
‘Will be stilled. Your family are safe
In this heathery field.’
The crowd relaxed like a loosening bow
And chattered, moving to and fro
To their tools of bronze and stone
For the wattle and thatch
And by the rising star-light
They raised the home’s timbers.
Hushed mutters as the wise woman arrived
Head in antler helmet, wrapped in rags of
Hare skins, feet leather-clad,
The crowd settled and stared
She gestured and a brand of ash,
Smoking and gleaming red in the glooming dusk,
Was passed to her hand
Streaming a line of smoke behind
She hunched, and silence spread
As she huffed breath on the ember, and sparks
Flew from her fingers: white-gold first, then amber,
Scarlet, violet, grass-green fire
That whirled and twisted thrice around her,
Probed the grassy flattened heathers
Tested, tasted, hither-thither
Sought for magic in the rain-damp meadows
Testing the site for spirits
Testing for gods and goblins
(The old farm withered so the family'd moved
To the heathery hills by the gushing river)
The sparks settled and the field fell to dark
But one spark, emerald-bright, sputtered
And the ground shivered, opening dark
A woman’s pallid face peered from the earth
The crowd gasped, but the wise woman stilled
Them with a wave and signalled a huntsman
To approach, a clutch of pheasants by the throat;
She seized one and flicked a blade from her rags
Slashing the dead bird and splattering blood
To the night-blackening grass
She bowed, murmuring in the tongue of the dead
To the peering lady in the earth
The woman within blinked assent, vanished,
And the turfs sealed. The wise woman sighed,
Staggered slightly and steadied herself
The huntsman rushed to spill a cup of water on her
Bloodied fingers and then
She pointed to the soil and spoke:
‘One sleeps here who would not be woke,
Spill blood each new moon and her wrath
‘Will be stilled. Your family are safe
In this heathery field.’
The crowd relaxed like a loosening bow
And chattered, moving to and fro
To their tools of bronze and stone
For the wattle and thatch
And by the rising star-light
They raised the home’s timbers.
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