The Personality of a Wave

[setsuled]

Happy May Day, everyone. So far I've celebrated by reading the new Sirenia Digest and the eerie new story by Caitlin R. Kiernan contained therein. "Day After To-morrow, the Flood" again shows Caitlin's talent for weaving a story from the vague border between the compulsive preoccupations of the brain and the haunting influences of subtle exterior forces. Told from the perspective of a protagonist suffering from dreams of terrible floods, the story contains wonderful dream imagery. I particularly like the use of jelly fish.

The protagonist speaks to someone named Jimmy and from him hears a story from his youth about a girl who drowned in a flooded quarry. Caitlin often quotes from "The Lobster Quadrille" from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland--this story has one of her most memorable uses of it. It helps give the story that dizzy sensation of being at the edge of a cliff and the possibility of falling off somehow making it tempting to jump--the resulting distrust in oneself making the experience all the scarier. A really nice story with a beautifully ambiguous conclusion.

Twitter Sonnet #1109

A purple ribbon's grey in amber light.
Again the green foresees the wicker man.
The setting sun foretells a snail to-night.
Awaked about the stars, the shade of Pan.
The beating paint exhumes the lurid leaf.
An aching trunk recalls a desp'rate trick.
In gleeful turns about the stripey sheath.
Inverted wings decree the fog is thick.
Within a brazen bush the scales've spun.
A neat and tidy row of stars collide.
A metal bearing burst before the sun.
A flower brood consumes the countryside.
Balloon ignition bends the glowing ferns.
Through snow and heat the daisy soon returns.