FROM “THE SPHINX WANTS ME TO GUESS” TO “LEPIDOPTERA”
SOURCE TEXT: The text-collage The Sphinx wants me to guess edited by Harold Abramowitz, Theodoros Chiotis, Jeremy Hight, Dimitra Ioannou, Dennis Lhomme, Sean Smith, and Matina L. Stamatakis.
CONTENTS
• the sound work Incommensurability by Irini Miga is linked to the words “the Sphinx wants me to guess.”
• the poem Strange Boolean by Sean Smith is linked to the words “guess,” “46.”
· the visual poems The Horror of Butterfly-Angels, the Horror of Rain, my Ruins by Satu Kaikkonen are linked to the words “rain,” “ruins,” “the horror of,” “butterfly-angels.”
· the prose poem Wild Nights by Yoko Danno is linked to the words “roars,” “fog.”
· the photo Helix by Anargyros Drolapas is linked to the words “infinite guesses amongst the maps.”
· the artwork (Cracked) Sphinx by Antonis Katsouris is linked to the words “Sphinx fissuré.”
· the poem Thapierolinsclovecor by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen is linked to the word “lepidoptera.”
“a glimpse of” invited some poets, writers, artists to co-edit Issue’s 14 source-text by contributing a (found or not) text or image inspired by Rae Armantrout’s verses “The Sphinx wants me to guess.” (Up to Speed, Wesleyan University Press). Many thanks to Harold Abramowitz, Theodoros Chiotis, Jeremy Hight, Dennis LHomme, Sean Smith, Matina L. Stamatakis for their collaboration. Please click here so as to identify the authors. Enjoy, guess, and interpret the “riddles”!
THE SPHINX WANTS ME TO GUESS
the rain wants me to associate
the flood asks me to count the stones and sunken headlights
the drought calls me to question
the fog asks me to remember
the snow tells me to forget it all
the hurricane screams of the folly of concise measure and to just stop
the mudslide whispers of the space of forgetting and the roars of being snapped into attention
the ruins call me over to gaze at the depth of incompletion and mutter something quiet and broken
there are infinite guesses amongst the maps , directions and the math of things, gaps too, some to break
Le monde
irréel
n’ a pas
donné
de
signe
L’ inconnu
nous
drive
et nous
on désobéit
On veut trouver le centre de gravité
this story in their own tongue
horrifying. And chorus on the horror of
She described a broken collage of black butterfly-angels, flying and hunting, their shadows splaying the white tundra; in the distance an ice palace-pyramid as huge and steep as a mountain, crawled with thousands of these humanoid lepidoptera; and above, in what should have been the sky, a bleak crag of white light poured as if through a hole torn in a cave’s roof. In the last seconds she begged for her life, tossing her head and spilling maggots from the cavity of her eye-socket, then arched sharply as if she had been stabbed below the ribs.
One little whining beast
Whose longing
Is to slink back to antediluvian burrow
And one elastic tentacle of intuition
To quiver among the stars Underground horizon / stick floating marsh of the shaded sky / newborn becomes granite: / debris-like & frozen / parted alongside.
M81 
Destroy the Universe
With a solution code
aglimpseof.net 