fractured vocabulary
swings where the ropes are severed
word temples bow
at the end of the river
An ode to dying languages, whether they be tongues effaced by history, letters whose contents gather dust, paint wrung out from a sponge with the vision still inside it, or birds singing at the moon on one spring night many years ago, Wind-lashed Teacup explores the mysteries of speech and silence, change, and letting go. Writing both an homage to the power of language and an acknowledgment of its insubstantiality, Namijo considers the word as sacred and fleeting, present and past, and channels synesthetic experience to evoke the visual and sensory underneath what is expressed in text, speech, and song. This collection considers the language hidden all around us, from the smallest scratches etched like hieroglyphs in the bottom of a careworn cup to the prophetic booms of distant thunder.