Cabinet
In the afternoon I plead guilty to the abreption of the inspection car, then to admiring flowers pedicellate; the calyx obsolete, the cup acetabuliform, five-angled, five-toothed and somewhat compressed, boat-shaped.
At night I observe with a telescope fitted with horizontal wires the rising and setting of stars, arriving at faultless truths about their theoretical axis of rotation by floating the whole in a mercury bath.
In the morning I listen through an ear-trumpet in the form of a natural ear to lists of obsolete names--epidote, oisanite, puschkinite, achmatite, beustite, escherite--a drowsy maid with the sleep scarce brushed out of her hair.
At night I observe with a telescope fitted with horizontal wires the rising and setting of stars, arriving at faultless truths about their theoretical axis of rotation by floating the whole in a mercury bath.
In the morning I listen through an ear-trumpet in the form of a natural ear to lists of obsolete names--epidote, oisanite, puschkinite, achmatite, beustite, escherite--a drowsy maid with the sleep scarce brushed out of her hair.
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Author's Note
a procedural experiment centered on the word obsolete.
Other stories by stephen hastings-king
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Love the words, love it. *
I'm not sure what this story is about other than just the words used.
Like poetry, sir. Like a waterfall. Peace...
thanks for the reads and comments. i like this piece. i like the surfaces it creates. it's a cut-up that uses example quotations from the oed associated with the word obsolete. the oed on-line ust changed their interface recently, so you can see collages of quotes in which the word appears that you're looking up. so they're ready-mades, in a sense. this trawl produced some luxurious words and i had great fun arranging and manipulating them into something like a story.