( via / via [pencil drawing] )

Mardi Gras in Kansas.

“XXV.

CHESSBISHOPS SHY TO ADHERE
to the juncture, to the bottom, to the crown,
to the underside of the numerators on foot.
Chessbishops and hotbeds of tiny lupines.

When the lee of each caravel recoils,
unravelled without americanizing,
they yield the plough handles with spasms of misfortune,
with puny pulse ill-accustomed
to blowing their noses on the backs of their wrists.
And the most acute treblesonance
gets tonsured and down, and fully
innazalates toward the icicles
of infinite pity.

Splendid backs are snorting
while bearing, hanging from musty breast-straps,
the silken badges with their seven colors
under zero, going from the guano islands
to the guano islands.
So much for the sores on the foul weather of poor
faith.
So much for the time of the rounds. So much for the rodeo
for the future plans,
when innanimate italics relate solely
disappointed tiptoed crusades.

They come then chessbishops to adhere
even to the false doors and the scratchpads.”

—Smith’s Trilce

Here is Asaphus lepidurus from the Middle Ordovician rocks of St. Petersburg.

"I'd have assumed that the idea that the cells in human bodies are completely replaced in a seven-year cycle arose during my lifetime, so I was surprised to find Congo in John Dos Passos's 1925 novel Manhattan Transfer making the point in a scene before World War One: 'Your body renews itself every seven years.' " —Andrew Shields via

Under the Milky Way.