Interview with excommunicated well-goddess and psychic poetess Abyssinia La Terre, otherwise known as the the doyenne of Dakhar. Interview by Archie Pelago.

AP: What would you say to the readers of ‘Two moons talking’?

Abyssinia: Cutter subordinate. You see, moments announce themselves with a kiss to the head, saying: (MISSING) But that is such rough news to good hooligans.

AP: What actually happened following the disappearance of (MISSING)?

Abyssinia: His hempseed bones were abominable, I didn’t recover them. Residue of raw seeds and crushes of crocus.

AP: Do you, as you claimed in the “Science Then” interview, still maintain love?

Abyssinia: Death is the patron saint of lovers.

AP: But your love affairs were the talk of (MISSING)

Abyssinia: Love was a bird in my hand, and I squeezed.

AP: And how is your memoir progressing?

Abyssinia: Fishes from sky fly into my head and I want to write the pictures I will see when I’m dead. When your eyes go you see miracles everywhere.  Halos on the moon and blue trees.  It is an act of rising.

AP: There is talk that you may publish one more volume before you depart, is this so?

Abyssinia: I am a repository for dead poetry, bubbling up like heated paint on good wood. You see, it never dries out, like a collage oiled-over, damp and hanging in the way damp lingers in lungs and the middle of rooms, like a ghost-in-waiting for a soul in the cold, above the lino.

AP: Do you have a writing routine? When and how do you write?

Abyssinia: I am a magnet for mornings. I try so hard to kill myself in subtle ways and get out of the glitzy quick and into our stream. Usually, I begin when my faculties land on the table looking like a mass of alien bones and broken Christmas boxes, returned from being stolen last August. After a few moments of meditation, clarity is a stiletto at my neck.

AP: You’re known for using time travel as a tool for research. Where else do you find inspiration?

Abyssinia: Never use a human as a muse, they’re too thirst and will tug a war back at the rope.  Your ideas, your steam engine energy will spill out before your bent-down eyes, like sausage guts all over the floor, like the bright handkerchiefs of magicians who all lie.  Who all lie.  Magicians. They all lie.

AP: And your demons; how did you overcome your problem years?

Abyssinia: I beat my demons with a shock goal in the 422,300th minute. But, they are watching. They gossip with the muses over blackened coffee and molasses in the purgatory of not being alive.

AP: I see. And love, can you answer that riddle?

Abyssinia: Love doesn’t fall upon you, it’s a taking off of robes, the show. Love and I have always been close strangers, mainly because this forest is fire dependent.

AP: Where did you first encounter love?

Abyssinia: On a ridge above a great, bitter lake where ground crumbled away, trees
lay down and died and the terror in my gut was so light.. (MISSING)

AP: Being a notorious outcast, how do you stave off depression?

Abyssinia: I find new friends. Those who are not bowling a despicable joy. But really, what do I know? But that which is history the next moment.

AP: And do you have a motto, or some parting wisdom for us?

Abyssinia: Humata, Hukhta, Huveshta.

AP: And a word for the rebels, before you depart?

Abyssinia: When your furrow veers and crashes through the neat lines of others’ lives, remember: it is still a way out of the field, and will look like a brave attempt from the sky.

AP: Thank you.

Abyssinia: Please leave and give me back my biscuits.

Caroline Stockford translates Turkish literature and poetry and works for Norwegian PEN promoting freedom of expression and monitoring the trials of journalists in Turkey.

Image banner: jerrymartinez57 via Flickr Creative Commons