Field guide No. 859
Feathers forged into steel
Soft things meet the press
A factory press compresses a bank of white feathers against a gleaming sheet of steel. The feather has not yet filed a complaint.
Field noteWhite feathers emerge from a press as a solid steel bar. The metal remembers its softer ingredients.
- Specimen
- No. 859
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Material
- Where it doesn’t exist
- An old metalworks.
- Nearest existing relative
- A hydraulic press.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Objects
Also impossible, also breaking material
An orange across alternate historiesOne orange with segments of glass, char and lime. A fruit can’t be every way it might have turned out.
Taut rope, wrinkled airHung from a rope like washing, a patch of air creases, drapes and casts a shadow it has no surface for.
Pear pressed into white marbleA pear sinks into a marble counter without breaking its surface. The stone has gone soft around the fruit.
Silver fish through frosted branchesHoarfrost bristles on a bush that sits wholly underwater, where no frost can form, and fish weave through it.