SeelenknarrenBy Lorenz Poeschl
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From the extant fragments of Pediculopubis’ 108th Summative, dedicated to, and performed at court for, Clessidra V, last Divine Empress of Orgiastikon.
…that a voice, beauty when written for, is without all contour when it is left to speak alone…
…a jewel in its setting, a clot of mud beyond…
…when the liberating vowel too elongated trickles, seething, into the hourglass…
…the wheeze of the dromedary, its rider dead to an expert arrow, which perseveres homeward, ill news and relegation given limbs…
…that the feast turns from wine to flesh, as the favourite son to the assassin…
…where the aleatory dis-scripture, memorised in devotion, is spat, venom, to the eye of the blind skies…
…its petals wilted and fallen, only the thorns and spines, angular distension as [illegible] remain…
…loss, my divine ruler and mistress of our pitiful souls,…
…these are, such, our losses…
…that a voice, beauty when written for, is without all contour when it is left to speak alone…
…a jewel in its setting, a clot of mud beyond…
…when the liberating vowel too elongated trickles, seething, into the hourglass…
…the wheeze of the dromedary, its rider dead to an expert arrow, which perseveres homeward, ill news and relegation given limbs…
…that the feast turns from wine to flesh, as the favourite son to the assassin…
…where the aleatory dis-scripture, memorised in devotion, is spat, venom, to the eye of the blind skies…
…its petals wilted and fallen, only the thorns and spines, angular distension as [illegible] remain…
…loss, my divine ruler and mistress of our pitiful souls,…
…these are, such, our losses…
Dr. Lorenz Poeschl (Pöschl) is a researcher and ESOL teacher from Auckland, Aotearoa. His work touches on Colonialism, Pedagogy, National Memory, and Intimacy. As a German immigrant, Lorenz writes to think about strangeness in a settler-colonial territory. Publications where his writing has appeared include the Journal of New Zealand Literature, Landfall, Tarot, and Shotglass.