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      March 27, 2025Michelle VisserNot Even

      Not even Hildegard knew that the manuscripts she wrote
      were written hand to skin or the hard number of sheep
      it took to copy a Bible. When monks,
      drunk on their own liqueurs, swore
      there were ghosts pushing books off of shelves
      in the wee hours of the morning when the stones
      under their feet made their bones ache with cold
      did the stories of haunted libraries take hold
      in the hearts of men who hoped there
      was something more to this world than
      thin gruel and thin cloth and thin hope
      of attaining heaven. Like men,
      books were clothed in animal skins. Like men,
      they pushed and writhed and forced themselves
      apart or together depending on the prevailing
      conditions of warmth or cold, wet or dry,
      abundance or scarcity.
      What haunts us is not the fall.
      What haunts us is the animal that
      even in death
      thinly covers us all.
       
      Image: “Abandoned Library” by Walter Arnold. ”Not Even” was written by Michelle Visser for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, February 2025, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the series editor, Megan O'Reilly

      “The first line of ‘Not Even’ intrigued me with its unexpected phrase, ‘the hard number of sheep it took to copy a bible.’ I was drawn to the contrast between nature and the metaphysical, which continues in the juxtaposition between the physicality of the monks (the stones making their ‘bones ache with cold,’ their ‘thin gruel and thin cloth’) and their belief in the spiritual. This contrast is also a connection: It’s the harshness of physical reality that seems to push the monks toward something beyond the material realm. I love the way this is reflected in Walter Arnold’s image of the bookshelves, a visual which is so tactile and textured, and yet we know that each book we see represents a transcendent experience. The metaphor that runs throughout the poem–books wrapped in animal skins, the cerebral anchored by the physical–reaches its peak at the end with a flawlessly-crafted insight into how our faith in the divine can never fully overcome our human nature.”

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