In Quire: Winter 1, "We are One of Each Other"
This is In Quire, a 'zine for me and you and anyone else that wants to. A 'zine is just a small, handmade book or pamphlet that is usually independantly produced. A quire is a word used to refer to a regimented amount of paper, a fragment of an idea, a thread in a tapestry, collated and then sewn together to make a book. To enquire is to ask a question is to seek an answer, but is the question independent of the answer independent of the question? Every word is a drop in a bucket, every breath is a breeze, and someday I hope to be able to watch those ripples become waves.
Here, I have collected a few brilliant works ( and some of my own stuff) in a single quire, and maybe one day I will have enough of these for a single book, a rather petty representation of the churning star of experience.
I will never call you deserters.
I will always hear your words.
I will not fear you.
I will fight with you.
I will never join the silencing force.
We are One of Each Other.
"There are a thousand people masquerading as you in the heads of all the people you have ever met. How does that make you feel?"
There are No Trees Left to Herd Felix Dockhand Burnsuage
There are no trees left to herd.
So people put saddles on the Ents,
And make them plow fields.
The Ents might not care...
At least they feel useful again.
We might even start breeding them in captivity.
-i'll cut my arms off- Jessie Rankin
I'm awake. Asleep. Awake.
I don't even know anymore.
I've made sure everything is on mute, and I can still hear it....
No matter. It's just my imagination. Just my imagination, yellow eyes pressed up against fogged panes of glass.
Just my imagination. Just my fingers striking these keys, the only thing I can hear is the beating of my own heart.
It's starting to match the other noises in the background.
It's only my imagination. Things like this don't happen in real life.
Eat, sleep, fuck, flee. Change skins on command.
Shit like this does not happen in real life.
None of this is real. yellow eyes pressing through my sliding glass doors. a whole army beyond the line of trees. a whole fucking swarm of them.
I'm hallucinating. I'm dreaming. I haven't eaten in three days. I'm a hallucination.
And now I'm talking to myself out loud, my voice a strange whine. Don't even know what I'm supposed to sound like. I think i might be babbling to drown out everything else.
2:18 am.
I have to be asleep. I will wake up to the sun on my face.
will I have a face when i wake up?
I think i will have the same jaundice as the outdoors.
If my phone rings right now I'll know the alien buzzing coming through the lines like the back of my hand.
Or like the inside of my veins.
Didn't i tell you that i'm an interrupted genius?
Cold now.
My fingers are turning colors that don't belong on human flesh.
did i forget my tetanus shot again? i always do that. accidentallyonpurpose.
the rust scares me. it's yellow and false and unsettling.
Our name is the sound of the waves heard from under the ocean, and the silence between cars on the highway.
Our name is the joy of trees in the forest at the first sunlight, the water boiling, the glass window being forged in firey tumult.
Our name is the crash of that window shattering, the sigh of the steam like the scythe at work, and the robins flowing north to south.
Our name is the walls around Jericho falling, our name is the bucket falling down the well, our name is the feet of ants marching.
Our name is the crinkle of blister-package plastic, pulled from plastic coated cardboard, and the mold that won’t grow there.
That is as empty a bucket I ever describ
If you would like your work featured in In Quire, please email submissions to [email protected] or visit micropress.tumblr.com/contact
If you would like to print your own copies of this: .pdf
Thank you for reading, and thank those for sharing.