What follows is an excerpt from my new collaboration with artist Diana Probst, 13.

Entitled 13 Medusa variations, the piece is an augmented, revised version of Medusa Variations, first posted on this blog in December. The most significant addition to the original prose poem is Diana’s arresting illustration.

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13 Medusa variations

1. Dreams
At twilight Medusa becomes a tree. Brittle branches grasp at the wind hissing through her leaves. She twists under mineral dreams.

2. Little Black Dress
Medusa queues to pay for a little black dress. She’ll knock ‘em dead tonight. But, fearing mirrors, she’ll never know how she looks in it.

3. Humdrum I
In Medusa’s kitchen, the kettle hisses and spits. She sits at the table, buttering toast. Her eyes are empty; her mind’s elsewhere.

4. Book
Medusa is turned into a book, bound in snakeskin. Left on the shelf for years, her pages yellow with age and envy. Her secret words will never be read.

5. Mermaid
Medusa swims through the starless abyss, harpoon in hand, hunting. Her eyes are pearls, her hair a crown of gaping eels.

6. Alice
He glimpses the reflection of a coil of Alice’s hair as she darts between still white soldiers. In the frame of a mirror, she’s vulnerable.

7. Humdrum II
Medusa’s mother-in-law clucks over the baby, pecks his cheek. Afterwards, in the stony silence of the kitchen, Medusa plans a roast chicken.

8. TV
They sit in their millions, fixed by her stare.

9. Creation Myth
Medusa is the first monster. She hisses sweet nothings that become the sea. At night, she’s mesmerised by the silver shield of the moon.

10. Cupid
Medusa meets the man of her dreams in a hall of statues. She shoots love’s arrow through his heart, then caresses him until he’s rock hard.

11. Humdrum III
She inspects her grey skin in the hand mirror.

12. Art
Medusa takes up sculpture. Her subject is terror. Her material: life.

13. Reflection
Lost in the Garden of Eden, Medusa chances upon what she takes to be a reflection of herself: a woman, ripe with sin, stroking a serpent.

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You can get a copy of 13 here. All texts on this site are he copyright of James Knight. The image on this post is the copyright of Diana Probst. All rights reserved.

My new book, 13, is out now. For the next few days it’s 20% off with the code SILEO.

Here’s a taster. Like all the other 13s in the book, it is illustrated by the wonderful Diana Probst.

13 anatomical studies

1
Behind her left eye is some sort of mechanism. If you look too closely, the pupil contracts to a pinpoint.

2
All sale items now 90% off. Hands fumble over jumbled junk. Blind eyes forget there’s a horizon.

3
First there was one man on his own, then there was a woman too, then there was shame. He put his hand on her breast and she laughed.

4
We tried to keep abreast of developments by dirtying our fingers on the Financial Times. Filthy lucre made us stinking rich!

5
I found someone else’s fingers in my glove. They were wiry and hard. I planted them in the garden and they grew into arm trees.

6
To take up arms against a sea of troubles…
I was dazzled by the lights and forgot the rest of the line. My head throbbed; I felt sick.

7
He rested his head. He was only asleep for a few seconds, in which time he dreamt that the Bird King was standing over him. When he woke up there was blood on the pillow.

8
In the cabinet is a map showing your birth, your heart, your desires. The red ink in which it is drawn is a blood-sample, stolen from you while you slept.

9
She put her ear to his chest. I’m telling you, she could hear the cockroaches scuttling around inside his hollow heart.

10
It was a marble mausoleum, thick with shadows. Our ears strained for sounds in the silence. A chesty cough made us jump.

11
The creature’s ears were attached to its abdomen.

12
You went in through the abdomen. Years lost in dark intestines. Eventually you found your way out of the labyrinth. Looking at a mirror, you saw the Minotaur staring back.

13
No good will come of this. Nothing lucky about the number 13. I don’t even know why I’m doing this, wrist-deep in the intestines of dead words.

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All texts on this site are the copyright of James Knight. The arm tree illustration is the copyright of Diana Probst. All rights reserved.

Tomorrow’s the big day. 13, my new collaboration with artist Diana Probst, will be released on Lulu.

13 is a book of fragments. Each of the thirteen chapters is divided into thirteen parts, most of which were originally tweets. There is no narrative, no linear development. The book is a labyrinth of words and images. Turning a corner, turning a page, the reader finds an echo, a reflection of something encountered earlier: a cocoon, a mirror, the moon, Medusa…

13, my latest collaboration with artist Diana Probst, will be out soon.

To give you a little flavour of the book, here’s a peek inside, followed by a word cloud, generated from the text…

To find out more about 13, click here.