A Pound of Sound is round

Poems von Brian Dewan
Prose von Kurt Hoffman

One day, the fish crawled out of the swamp. They had pairs of eyes, dark eyes, and large teeth. Over time, of course the temperature would drop, and the fish would grow hair. Their feet would grow hooves and claws. They would bellow and groan and populate the earth. And soon they were on pleasure cruises, slipping away from the ballroom to woo each other in the salt air up on deck, the ancient and salty sea streching everywhere under the moonlight. What next?

Perhaps nothing was ever next and humans are still lost in transition from microbe to beast to sentient aethete. We are still trying to leave the swamp, but we don’t know what limbs we need for the next step, as it were.

Is that so? asked the princess, her glassy eyes reflecting the spray of purple aters she held in her hand. I believe I should grow some sort of fins right between my two cerebral hemispheres. I think that I should swim into my synapses.

Don’t you mean your sinuses, laughed the handsome swain at her side.
She frowed and broke his head off – snap! – just like that. She peered down his neck. There were no fins inside, or anything else. But drifting out the chimney that used to be his neck was a fine mist – his narrative entrails now libereated, creating a bewildering perfume that spread across the garden like regret.

Text: Kurt Hoffman