Honour Mack, Map 5, 2015 (Artist Website)
Fabric dye & gouache on paper
7.5” x 7.5”
We lived in a time of kings.
There were animals to keep at bay;
there were animals who looked like us
in the hollows of every wood.
In some ancestral stories, a widowmaker
is one who strips the scales of fish
and hangs them from every staircase.
How strange the light,
how long the hours.
How deep the night.
Every pulse a hammer trembling
in the hands of men.
Across three years, a spine bent
over the toilet, bile tangled in hair like rain,
the first swallow
& the presumed to be last.
A body stops working
only when the brake line has been cut.
Sometimes the line
waits for the knife.
We lived in a time of want,
when the frogs gorged themselves on pebbles
and the ravens ate their own young.
We lived in a time of kings,
when the fish sang from every corridor,
when we watched dogs leap to be put down
and we understood.