#rebecca giggs

fathoming

PETROGLYPH
dune amplifier — a Basque code: coloured flags, burning straw — whale piano — did the other animals make it transparent? — shallow and getting shallower

THE OOOO-ERS
Eden — close, but no touching — swimmerets — the first thing with faces, being only faces — between thing and kin — again, numerousness — holy shiver — dry dreams — augenblick

BLUE MUSEUM
whales inside out — whales with knees — forewarning: scantling — a body without a voice and a voice without a body — past outside of memory — sand

CHARISMA
dreams, being screen-coloured — faking solitude — cold, hard numbers — the agony of loving the disappearing — endlings — the less we see, the more aura it has — a half-head dream

SOUNDING
first, signal interference — two voices in one bowhead — blue whales drop three white keys on a piano — voices with no origin — aurora — soft mountains

KITSCH INTERIOR
out-of-placeness — spiralling — horse latitudes — middleness — the gyre is invisible — its skin is changed — white flag — the things afloat that will never sink — dumped desire — and hope

SCANTLING
egg and eye — kraken, owl — their heads, being too small to nourish their tails — Virginia Woolf reports he is constantly seen — whales: are they islands? — the swarm, the squirm, the sucker, the spiral — self as circus

—Words & phrases drawn from chapter headings & summaries in Rebecca Giggs, Fathoms: the world in the whale (Scribe, 2020)