Catherine Kasper
“Statue of the Spider’s Web (from Notes from the Committee)”
from Caketrain Issue 06

As often as this statue is constructed, so it must be disassembled in pouring rain. Often, it goes unnoticed, shrouding the town in a labyrinth of invisible connections like the constellations. There are those who say only children can see the statue, and others who believe it is impossible for children to see, requiring the experience of years to first envision the possibilities a web invokes, and then to be able to bring that mental conception slowly and painfully from inside one’s head, through the visual canals, to appear externally before the eyes. It is this kind of elaborate concentration that many say destroys the artifice as thoroughly as a heavy hail storm. On this side of the argument are those who believe the statue spontaneously emerges from the bodies of the town arachnids, those who believe it is charmed by minds who have no preconceptions, or is spun in air by notes played on a flute. The sheer size of the statue brings some to argue that a gigantic, prehistoric creature lurks in caves in the far mountains, and descends on the town before rainstorms, driven by an increasing moisture in the air, and an instinct to weave a canopy of protection, although, alas, a permeable one.


Caketrain is a literary journal and press based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Our interest is in bringing you, reader, the very best in contemporary creative writing, full stop. Our goals are for each issue of our journal to submerge you in a birthing tank for gelatinous language monsters, young masses of tentacular foci undulating as directed (in all, at once) by our eclectic stable of contributors; for each new book we publish to seduce and ensnare you, sometimes intangibly, always undeniably; and for you, reader, to be able to draw at least one passage from our banks that prods your mind with such precision and power that it feels as if it was written for your eyes alone. To wit and to whet, here is a snippet, a slight nip of our delicious lit mix:


Copyright 2003-2006 Caketrain Journal and Press. Rights to literature revert to their respective authors.
ISSN 1547-6839.

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