Field guide No. 1474
Prism casting seven black shadows
A rainbow, in mourning.
A glass prism in a dusty sunlit room fans out seven black bars across the wall instead of colours. The spectrum came out monochrome.
Field noteGlass splits light into colour. This prism splits it into darkness, which isn’t a thing light contains.
- Specimen
- No. 1474
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Physics
- Where it doesn’t exist
- A derelict storeroom with one sunny window.
- Nearest existing relative
- A paperweight.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
Also impossible, also breaking physics
Empty lunch bags cast chicken shadowsPaper bags throw boxy shadows; under the strip light these six throw hens, combs and all.
The other costumeA mirror returns what stands in front of it. A bare skeleton for a living okapi returns something else.
Grass through the red deerGrass and stag occupy the same space here, each solid, neither giving way to the other.
Dry seabed beneath the kelpA dusty dry patch sits inside a column of green sea. The ocean opted out of itself.