Timi Sanni

Using the words of its author, Andrea Blythe, which she in turn found in a work by Stephen King and then repurposed, Necessary Poisons is “a locomotive eloquence” (p. 13), with “a voice like a shotgun” (p. 10), its “X’s following your dotty line” (p. 12), along “the ordinary zenith of hell” (p. 15), syllables that “decline to name their corpse a house” (p. 22), as they “twine broken hope with cabalistic designs, displaying a terrible end” (p. 46).

Often, when I think about connected stories, I think about series and sequels or about the sprawl of cinematic or comics universes: Situations held together by setting, yes, but most of all by networks of shared characters (at least as exciting cameos) and clear causal links between each installment.

Find me right here and now, scholar. Find me in your history of the space race, alone in that gunmetal vessel. Hardly human, I could as well stand on two hind legs for what I know in body about sacrifice. Lab rat or martyr. I know I am named in the thoughts of men; in that critical creed of science, my survival, neither expected nor planned. I am on my fourth orbit, scholar, my dark, wet nose still holding its moisture, even as my fur finds fire—a torch. I am my own little comet. Imagine no pain.