Six-Eyed Kitten
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andrewkozma.net
Six-Eyed Kitten
@andrewkozma.net
2.3K followers 320 following 3.7K posts
A writer of poems, plays, stories, novels, and essays. Rep'd by Jessica Sinsheimer.

Edits for Reckoning

http://www.andrewkozma.net/
http://patreon.com/thedrellum
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With the oceans gone, there was no place left for the ships to go.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of a large ship (painted with three horizontal red, black, and stripes) inside a giant building in Oslo, Norway. The ship is the Polar Vessel, having gone both to the North and South polar as far as possible. The back reads: With the oceans gone, there was no place left for the ships to go, and so the sanctuary was built, a ship-sized aquarium (for lack of a better term) for a ship. Just one ship. Only one. See, the builders wondered why they should save more since, without oceans or even lakes, there was no need for ships except as a historical marker, a curiosity, a remembrance of where we had once been and never would be again. The other ships, boats of all sizes and purposes, they rotted on the exposed ocean floor, or became homes for people trying to escape the hungry sun. They kept the flags flying, hoping beyond hope it would rain again.
November 11, 2025 at 3:40 PM
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Distance puts a shine to any object, whether a building or a relationship, whether faith or duty, whether sacrifice or sin.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of Belfast City Hall in Northern Ireland, taken from an angle so it shows the front and the side. The building is in a large grassy square surrounded by a metal fence. Various people are walking the sidewalk. The building is white and classical, almost Grecian in style, with several towers. The back reads: No one lives at city hall. This makes it less of a city and more of a ruin, but no one wants to visit or work at ruin hall. And, yet, a ruin it is. Cold, musty air flows out from its cracked windows and the doors resting on broken hinges. From a distance, city hall seems whole, as flawless and perfect as the day it was completed, white marble not yet pitted with holes, copper accents still unverdigrised. Distance puts a shine to any object, whether a building or a relationship, whether faith or duty, whether sin or sacrifice. The ruin hall is all of those for us, for me. All of us who live here have left so many bodies behind us to pave our way. The ruin hall reminds us, oh so gently, that we are next. Yes, we are next.
November 10, 2025 at 3:37 PM
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To join the church, you must admit the light.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the inside of the Our Lady of Light Chapel, specifically focusing on the "famous stairway." This is a spiral staircase going up to the balcony at the back of the church. The light is amber. The church itself is ornate, with sculptures along the walls and various other decorations. The back reads: To join the church, you must admit the light. You must open the light up to your body by opening your body up to the light. You can use a knife--many do--but you can also use metaphor or other indirect means. Simply by attending service, you will find yourself bathed in light. It will not blind you, no matter how bright it becomes, and you will feel it all over your skin, no matter how thick your clothes, like oil rubbed into your flesh by a loved one. Knife or simple openness of thought, or even self-immolation, there are many paths to the light. Don't just admit the light. Become the light. Admit the truth that only you can reveal the darkness hiding behind everyone else's body.
November 6, 2025 at 3:12 PM
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Detov I and you can, too!
A middle aged white man in a black canvas jacket with an I voted sticker on in reverse so it reads Detov I.
October 31, 2025 at 4:02 PM
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We paint ourselves into the walls with our brushes as fingers.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows various murals around Belfast in Ireland. One takes up an entire side of a building and shows a couple and various kids walking a sidewalk in a forest. Another says Release the POWs now Saoirse with a silhouette of a man that seems to be blended with a prison. The last shows a man in an orange and black shirt with a live man walking in front of the mural. The back reads: We paint ourselves into the walls with our brushes as fingers. No, our blood isn't paint, though you would wish it so--the dead artist easier to bury than the live one. Underneath your gaze, we steal what was always rightfully ours, the oil that makes this world go, that you've stolen for your own. Through alchemy learned from banned texts, that oil you so treasure echoes our thoughts, reflects us onto surfaces you can't ignore, liquid money now worthless to you, but treasured by us. The voiceless become voiced. The unseen, seen. To rid yourselves of our memory, you will have to destroy the walls, tear down all you have built--no, what we've built for you--and start fresh with your own sad hands and empty heart.
October 30, 2025 at 9:07 PM
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The wooden relic built by our ancestor takes all forms.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of a four-poster bed made out of dark wood, very intricate and almost medieval. It is in a bare white room with a worn, stone fireplace. Though the walls are white, they are textured with intricate patterns. A chest is in front of the bed, a chair beside it, and a table next to the chair. Windows let light in, but show nothing of the outside. The back reads: Marriage bed, death bed, day bed: the wooden relic built by our ancestor takes all forms. When we sleep, it chastises us for not living up to expectations and exhorts us to do better. Or else what? we asked, but all we got was silence. The bed was made of all old wood, entitled with its age and the care given it over the years, all that careful sanding, those precious oils rubbed into its surface by hand, bare hand, not even cloth to soak up some of those priceless drops. The bed spoke when it wanted to, fed us dreams when it had something terrible to commit to our memory. Family legend had it the bed was built from a tree grown over the corpses of our family's dead, and so that tree, and the bed, were a part of us, and we a part of it. With my brothers and sisters, I hacked it to pieces, and we burned our remains.
October 28, 2025 at 4:39 PM
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The Democrats have work to do on their fundraising tactics.
A photo of a fundraising envelope for the DNC that reads Important Notice Enclosed: DNC sues Donald Trump.
October 24, 2025 at 8:38 PM
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Fellow Houstonians, join me, Glenn Shaheen, Tracy Jo Barnwell, and Kelly Moore for the Fourth Annual Halloween Reading at Basket Books & Art, this Saturday, October 25th at 7 pm! Costumes are encouraged!
A water-color poster advertising the 4th Annual Halloween Reading at Basket Books & Art in Houston, Texas, on Saturday, October 2th at 7 pm with Glenn Shaheen, Tracy Jo Barnwell, Kelly Moore, and Andrew Kozma. The poster depicts a green forested landscape at the top over ladders leading down into the purple-ish earth where cats and bats swarm around. The cat says, Costumes encouraged!
October 23, 2025 at 8:08 PM
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The sidewalks have invaded the streets, the streets cry out for help.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a drawing of a Douglas DC-3, a propeller-driven transport plane. The blue and light green plane has one propeller engine on each wing. The plane is seen from the side and says United Air Lines Mainliner on the side. The back reads: Dear Douglas, so much has happened since you left. Our once quiet world is unrecognizable! The sidewalks have invaded the streets, the streets cry out for help, and grass migrates from lawn to lawn. The sky is filled with planes that never land. Every so often, a mummified body falls from the sky, the meat of it scarred with teeth marks. All of the grocery stores are free, but half who go in never come out. Is your new home better? We are so hungry. Our teeth develop teeth. Love, A.
October 23, 2025 at 2:38 PM
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We all had our homes in the wall.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a view of the altar screen inside the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Los Angeles. Beyond a stretch of pews is a wall completely taken over by a mural consisting of about two dozen paintings of saints and other holy figures inside little alcoves, as though in tiny rooms in a miniature 2D church. The back reads: We all had our homes in the wall, tiny alcoves we decorated to make them seem more than caves. This is where the giants had put us and where we'd stay if we wanted to avoid being the next dinner time snack. Our memories were foggy. Had we always been made of pastry? At night, when the giants were asleep, we sang songs while we collected the crumbs of ourselves we'd shed.
October 22, 2025 at 5:17 PM
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We have given royalty wings. We believed that flight would temper their egos.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of a plane flying high over a city, possibly over Washington, D.C. Text underneath the photo reads: The JET-PROP VISCOUNT flies non-stop between Washington and Chicago. The plane is red and white. The sky is a little smoggy. The back reads: We have given royalty wings. We believed that flight would temper their egos, access to the air lessening their lofty airs. We thought that if more power was given to the powerful, that would dilute their urge to use their power. Instead, they swooped down on their giant wings of skin and plucked us from the sidewalks, only to drop us from a great height when they grew tired. They said they were doing us a favor. They were showing us the world. What the world truly was, and what it would do to us, like it or not.
October 21, 2025 at 3:29 PM
andrewkozma.net
The cars attended the car convention without the people.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the Monterey Peninsula Airport, which I'm guessing is in California. The photo is maybe from the 40s or 50s, as evidenced by the old-style fashion of the cars in front of the airport. The photo is taken from a hill with scrub brush in the foreground. Mountains line the horizon. The back reads: The cars attended the car convention without the people. It was a scandal, and almost impossible for anyone to get to work. Sure, the buses were still working, but people (wrongly) still had their pride. What was happening at the car convention? Everyone knew whatever it was, it was nothing good, what with all the honking so loud it drove all the pigeons from downtown. A few mechanics and cab drivers with close personal relationships with their vehicles had gone in to try and talk sense into the cars, but they never came out. We just had to wait until they ran out of gas or battery life. Until then, we enjoyed clear skies.
October 15, 2025 at 5:59 PM
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The stone was dead and we all knew it, but knowing wasn't the same as accepting.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of Saint Patrick's Grave in Ireland. A giant stone slab rests on a bed of cobblestone in the middle of a large graveyard. A town is just in the distance, past a few winter-bare trees. The back reads: The stone was dead and we all knew it, but knowing isn't the same as accepting. Georgette believed the stone could be brought back to life, but Antoni told her not to be silly, because the rock wasn't dead. Stoney, aware of the irony inherent in his name, didn't want to get involved, but he was the only one of us with a car, so joke's on him. That's what Antoni said, trying to keep it all lighthearted, but his mom ran a morgue and his sense of humor was that of a drowning man. Still, Stoney drove us around to pick up supplies for the ritual Antoni swore would work. And it would, we all felt it. And we all feared it. I, for one, was glad the stone was dead. But the stone wasn't glad at all. Antoni set up everything on the stone, and Stoney, poor Stoney, handed him the knife.
October 14, 2025 at 2:29 PM
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The trees advanced while the city retreated.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows two views from Chicago, split diagonally by text saying, Greetings from Chicago The City Beautiful. The bottom is a view from the runway of Midway Airport. The top is of the Chicago skyline, with foreground taken up by a gigantic greenspace/park and the buildings in ranks in the background. The back reads: The trees advanced while the city retreated. It hadn't taken as long as some people had thought. Remove all the people, and it was as thought the city had no reason to be. Concrete crumbled to dust. Buildings fell at the sudden appearance of flowers. Streets became paths became the feckless tracks of deer. Strange thing was, the trees took on an almost human cast. Eyes emerged from the bark, then mouths. They called out. They said they wanted to be friends. We did not believe them.
October 9, 2025 at 2:10 PM
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What we never want to admit is that a significant responsibility of royalty is looking down on the rest of us.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a woman in a floor-length white dress with a red sash. She is wearing a crown and appears to have short auburn hair (or it is pulled back into a bun). She is standing in what might be a ballroom, but is definitely a richly appointed room. She is the Princess Martha Louise. The back reads: What we never want to admit is that a significant responsibility of royalty is looking down on the rest of us. The world is only defined in terms of differences, and without knowledge of those differences, we would all be lost. Without our names, who are we? Without the rich to judge us poor, how will we even know what to value? Did you even know that royalty have a burden, too? They did not volunteer for their lot. They would wish it different if they could. Too much rich food! Oh for a saltine. My kingdom for a saltine! They know, that if we wished, we could change it all up in an instant. Equalize the elites and the masses. The world could be balanced, or at least fair, or at least not a tale of two extremes. Royalty wants this, actually wants this. So why don't you? That's the ripe question: now you know, what will you do?
October 9, 2025 at 2:08 AM
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I ordered delivery.
October 7, 2025 at 1:27 AM
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The few who needed the fear injected back into them.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the University of Southern California from the rose garden in Exposition Park, Los Angeles, California. The photo is taken from a path that looks over the garden towards the university, the buildings all obscured by trees except a tower. Various beds of roses are in bloom. A multi-jet fountain takes up a large central area of the garden. The back reads: You wanted to meet where it was quiet and no one was around, and I refused. This was not that kind of assignation. In fact, I know you wanted an assassination, under the radar, unknown except for the few who needed the fear injected back into them. All of them. Our brothers. Our other selves deluded into thinking they'd escaped into obscurity with a little plastic surgery. You wanted me to be the example. I refused to hold any of us to account.
September 29, 2025 at 2:28 PM
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Hello and welcome to the end of your life!
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a picture of a giant cask/vat inside the Old Bushmills Distillery. All the colors are red and brown and copper as if the picture has been washed with whiskey. The cask/vat takes up most of the picture, with a roof and metal beams above it, in addition to another piece of equipment that kind of looks like the neck of a bird. The back reads: Hello and welcome to the end of your life! Be elated: it is also the beginning! You are one of the lucky few each year chosen to be casked and, as a result, will bring joy to so many. This is something to be proud of, not afraid of. You were filtered from hundreds of thousands by our award-winning selection process, and you are prized because of your experience, knowledge, emotional stability, in short, your flavor. When people finally tap your cask they will become drunk off of the life you lived, as well as all the promise of that life which we are cutting short, yes, but only to prevent spoilage. Do you know why people drink? It is because they have aged into nostalgia, which is to say, regret. You will avoid that sadness. And your desire to live? That, oh that, provides the spice, the burn.
September 25, 2025 at 2:42 PM
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We are looking for the guy who did this.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a birthday card that says Hotdog! It's your birthday! with a hotdog in the center of the card, mustard down the middle of it, and the hotdog itself wearing a birthday hat. The colors of everything are red and mustard. The back reads: Dear S, we are looking for the guy who did this. How do we know it is a guy? Because only a guy would change everyone's birthdays to the same day to avoid having to remember the birthdays of his friends and family. I guess we should count ourselves lucky the culprit isn't married. Tom just mentioned one way of finding him--see whose birthday ISN'T the 9ths of September. No way such a narcissist is going to give away his own special day. So be on the lookout. Check your calendar and address books. Also, I'm sorry about the pregnancy. To have done seven months only to have six more forced upon you, I can't imagine. At least we know when it'll be born. ~A
September 24, 2025 at 3:42 PM
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It is hard to keep the zombies down.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of St. Peter's Isle in the Lake of Bienne. What this means is a shot of a forested island in the middle of lake, taken from one shore with a wooden fence, a farmer, and the roof and tower of a church in the foreground. In the background are forests, more forests, and distant mountains. The back reads: Dear S, it is hard to keep the zombies down, just like you warned it would be. But I need the seasonal work, the pay is good, and the food is actually amazing. Still, it is a little disheartening that the zombies keep coming back up after we spend so much time planting them deep in the ground. It's supposed to be good for the farmland, both the nutrients released by their decomposition and the aerating of the soil as they struggle to free themselves. I suppose we haven't been digging deep enough. We lost another worker yesterday. A nice guy. Well, now we have another nice zombie. ~A
September 23, 2025 at 2:10 PM
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I am outside your house as you read this.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows Colton Hall in Monterrey, California, which was the first Capitol building in California. Now it simply looks like a large, white mansion house in a rich neighborhood. It's two stories, with a peaked roof, and a columned porch in front with stairs leading up to the second floor from either side. It is surrounded by trees and a green lawn. The back reads: I am outside your house as you read this. I sent the postcard using your own mailbox. This stamp is one of yours and has your fingerprints on it. Everything traces back to you. Have you looked out the window yet? Oh yes, there you are, right on time. Right now you're noticing the smell of death in the room, wondering where that handyman went the other day, who you never saw leave. Look under the couch. The sirens are calling your name.
September 22, 2025 at 2:34 PM
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And God, they did not join the argument or try to help settle it.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a view of San Carlos Borromeo Mission in Carmel, California. It appears to be from an inside courtyard, showing a fountain surrounded by a pathwayed garden, trees dropping their branches low enough to shade the ground and other trees leaning up against the stucco walls of the mission. A hallway with red tiles is along the left, while a larger structure with a tower, the church, perhaps? is directly center. The back reads: We were here to find God. Little did we know that God had come here to find us, too. God stood in the center of the terrace, so still that we took them for a statue at first. In fact, that's how we started arguing: some saw a statue of a woman, some a man, some a dog, one a cat. When the statue moved and revealed themself as God, you'd think that would stop the arguing, but no. And God, they did not join the argument or try to help settle it. First they cried. Then they laughed.
September 18, 2025 at 3:48 PM
andrewkozma.net
We could always count on the birds.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the cover of the book Wayward Creatures, a book of poems by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes. It is an illustration in blue-greens of a flower with a multitude of tiny thin petals all surrounding an eye that is staring out at the viewer. The back reads: We could always count on the birds. One seasonal constant, the migration South countered by the migration North, and now that's all fucked because birds have lost their sense of direction. It's easy to want to blame climate change, but scientists tend to agree that's not the reason, and neither is the Earth reversing its magnetic field at fault, or solar flares, or even microplastics. We don't have an explanation. What we have are flocks of birds going every which way, every month of the year. Swans have been roosting in my backyard for going on nine months now. Ducks collide in mid-air. Airflight is often delayed, but at least they make pretty patterns in the sky.
September 17, 2025 at 3:47 PM
andrewkozma.net
I've reached the point in the Arctic expedition where the snow has been replaced with white sand.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a black and white photograph of Fridjof Nansen, an explorer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nansen is a white man with short hair and a flaring moustache with intense, almost haunted eyes. He's wearing a fur coat with a collar that comes some way up past his neck. The back reads: Dear R, I've reached the point in the Arctic expedition where the snow has been replaced with white sand. It's true that every snowflake is unique, but it is also true there are much less of them than you think and for exactly that reason, but try explaining THAT to someone who's never been to either pole. Sand is just the Earth's way of balancing the scales. Easy enough to understand. I have a harder time wrapping my head around the sharks. Every so often we come upon one, completely white, flopping on top of the sand as if dropped there by a cruel God or, what seems even harder to believe, from underneath the sand, as if they swam up through it into the air and trapped themselves. At least it has solved the hunger problem. We are part of the ecosystem. We have to admit it. ~F
September 16, 2025 at 2:14 PM
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The landscape has begun talking to us.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a photo of Roald Amundsen, an explorer of the late 19th. and early 20th. centuries. It is black and white, showing a white man wearing a fur-lined jacket that covers his entire upper body (the only part pictured). His face is lined and he looks tired. The back reads: Dear F, the landscape has begun talking to us. At first, we thought it was S- who had vanished in the night to, we believed, get lost in the storm and, we hoped, buried in the snow where he would at least have the barest chance of survival. We could not find him, or anyone where the voice came from, just the endless waste of ice and snow. The more we tried to ignore the voice, the louder it became. It sounded closer, too. Not under our feet, but just behind our ears. It was a voice I'd never heard before, faint and beautiful, like the ice crystals blown in a fierce wind which end up lacerating our skin, though we never feel it, never notice until we wake the next morning with blood all over our pillows. I answered it. I did. ~R
September 15, 2025 at 4:11 PM