Field guide No. 401
The other costume
The mirror dressed differently.
In a garage lit for the evening, an okapi stands in front of a tall mirror, and its reflection is a white skeleton of itself. Only one of them made an effort.
Field noteA mirror returns what stands in front of it. A bare skeleton for a living okapi returns something else.
- Specimen
- No. 401
- Genus
- Generated
- Kind
- Impossible (the round square kind)
- Breaks
- Physics
- Where it doesn’t exist
- A garage, early evening.
- Nearest existing relative
- A full-length mirror.
- Filed in Fresh slop as
- Surreal
- Season
- Slopoween. In season in October: the walk only passes it then.
Also impossible, also breaking physics
The shadow arrives firstA shadow is the shape of its object by definition. This one has other plans, and so cannot be one.
Butterfly shadows over a sleeping tigerCast by butterflies that aren’t in the room: a silhouette of nothing, which is a contradiction with wings.
The other argumentA reflection that does something else is not a reflection of the people in front of it.
Knotted river through autumn marshWater in a knot has to cross over itself, flowing above its own surface without a bridge.