Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
“Aunt Margaret” from The Tough Romance
1979 rpt Guernica Editions, 1990
[…]
There was a marshy patch behind her house. When Sundays
brought the family to her rooms, I’d hunt the
puddled grass for frogs and drown them in a jar, fling them
at
walls, singe ants with glasses. Inside the house
I drowned the goldfish, choked the parakeets, and made
a paraphernalia of hell the size of those too big to kill.
In Shapeshifter “The Last Breath of One Such As Us”, David Livingstone Clink writes a glossa based on this passage and introduces some accidentals (single for singe and godlfish for goldfish) and the lineation is off.
… I’d hunt the puddled grass for frogs
and drown them in a jar, fling them at walls,
single aunts with glasses. Inside the house
I drowned the godlfish, choked the parakeets
A trip to the library to check against the 1979 edition by McClelland and Stewart. The lineation is closer to Clink’s quotation.
There was a marshy patch behind her house. When Sundays
brought the family to her rooms, I’d hunt the
puddled grass for frogs and drown them in a jar, fling them at
walls, singe ants with glasses. Inside the house
I drowned the goldfish, choked the parakeets, and made
a paraphernalia of hell the size of those too big to kill
Almost made a transcription error of my own. Reading “puddle grass” for “puddled grass”. Such is the power of shapeshifting letters…
Believe Your Own Press, 2004
And so for day 2097
09.09.2012