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Tuesday, February 02, 2016

Coscinomancy

"Heart and its blood vessels," by Leonardo da Vinci

“…when the young woman, the sorceress, took in hand
some of the tarn water and spake over it words not to be
understood, the fishes lifted their heads and stood up
on the instant like men…”

From “The Book of the Thousand and One Nights,”
Richard F. Burton

Yes, cupped hands can make a sort of sieve, but
it’s my heart that’s a perfect fit for this oracle: it
takes both the sieve and the shears to spell out
hidden things in this way. I run on through early
dim light, feeling not seeing, atria emptying and
valves snipping shut—cut the stream, reopen for
the fill, syncopation pushing blood through the
mesh of my lungs. There are words I speak over
my jackhammering heart, this sieve and shears,
words not to be understood, not even by myself;
and when I speak them, the oracle tells me all the
names of what had been hidden inside my pulse.

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