Field guide No. 669
Hummingbird creasing the air
Leaves a fold wherever it goes.
A hummingbird hovers by a concrete wall, and the air behind it has folded into a long pleated strip like creased paper. Somebody will have to iron that.
Field noteAir has no surface to fold, yet the bird leaves a pleated trail of it, crisp as card.
- Specimen
- No. 669
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Where it doesn’t exist
- Beside a concrete wall, against a pale sky.
- Nearest existing relative
- A hummingbird.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking material
Ping pong ball with a cubic biteCelluloid balls are hollow, yet the cube cut from this one is solid white all through.
From sugar cubes to granite bouldersEach cube is sugar at the top of the fall and granite at the bottom, and no single cube is ever both.
Black swan and ripples in dry grassRipples belong to water, while the swan crosses dry grass. The field has borrowed a lake’s surface.
Swallows vanish through the sky tearSwallows pass through a black slit stretched across the sky. The clouds have left a door ajar.