From the Boghole & the Beldame — Joanna Ruocco

No. 12, a previously unpublished selection from Joanna Ruocco's The Boghole and the Beldame, is a pastoral hallucination--more spell than story--that harks back to the waking/walking life of an archetypal dreamer. Afoot in the muck of language itself, Ruocco paints a thicket in which every shimmering growth baffles the landscape. The characters--creatures, figures, names--in The Boghole and the Beldame lean against time, pluck it for quills, wring its veins for blue, and blush black. Ruocco knows language like the tongue knows teeth. Here is a gateway to everywhere.