Six-Eyed Kitten
LightNews LightNews
banner
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
Posts Replies Media Videos
andrewkozma.net
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of The Apparition of Our Lady statue in the Sanctuary of Knock, Mayo, Ireland. It is a white statue, ovalish in overall shape, with a golden crown on top. She is floating above the ground with her hands cupping the air in front of her. The back reads: I am knocking at your door. I have been knocking for hours, or maybe days. Every so often, I pause and put my ear to the door and think I hear your shallow, anxious breathing on the other side. I don't say your name. I don't speak at all. I simply begin knocking again. To tell you the truth, I'm no longer sure that I want you to open the door. To be completely honest, I am scared of what I will find behind that scarred wooden surface. Is this prayer? Or is this fear? What I've become convinced of is that if I don't stop knocking, you'll never die.
November 27, 2025 at 3:40 PM
andrewkozma.net
People who stay at La Fonda live here their entire lives.
A postcard, front and back. The back shows a catty-corner view of the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is built to look like Native American pueblos, with soft edges and blocky faces, for all of its three-story height. The streets are lined with old-style cars, the picture having been taken in the 50s or 60s. The back reads: Dear B, I've moved in to La Fonda. I realize you were only paying for a review and so this sudden increase in expenses was unexpected, but I would argue that a review is only as good as its thoroughness and so my living here is the most thorough I can be. People who stay at La Fonda live here their entire lives. When you check in, it is not simply for a day or a week but for all time. Once I signed my name on the guest register, I realized I had always already been here. I was born here. I will die here. It is hard to explain, so I encourage you to visit and see what the fuss is about. ~A
November 26, 2025 at 7:17 PM
andrewkozma.net
Everything became miracles.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the Apparition Chapel in the Knock Shrine in County Mayo, Ireland. It is night, and the Chapel is lit up behind the altar, three pure white statues glowing to the left of a cross surrounded by an arc of angels. The back reads: Everything became miracles. Buying what you needed from the grocery store. A knot staying tied on your shoes. It was inevitable that miracles would lose all of the glamour we associated with them, not to mention the church grew overwhelmed with the business of it all, not realizing they lost a little bit of their own power with every verified miracle until it was too late. They became the Jiffy Lube of religions. They made house calls. A five-dollar donation to the kiosk out front of the grocery store was enough to get a miracle verified simply on the basis of your verbal account, no matter how sketchy. Soon, every pair of shoes walked on water (as long as that water was on the sidewalk). I never realized what a miracle it was, your eyes.
November 25, 2025 at 3:55 PM
andrewkozma.net
They found the rocks in the shapes of people.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows a castle on the top of a layer-cake-looking hill in a green landscape of mostly fields with mountains blueing the horizon. Text along the bottom names this castle the Rock of Cashel. The back reads: First they found the rock in the shape of a castle. They they found the rocks in the shapes of people. When they started looking, really opened their eyes, every stone ended up being in the shape of something else. Yes, all these rocks and stones were small (though proportional to each other), but that didn't make things any better. There was an entire world around them that they'd never even noticed. If they'd been so blind to this, what else had they missed? That was the question they refused to ask themselves. Not that they had time, as pretty soon after they found the rocks and stones, those rocks and stones started to move. Were they coming to life or had they always been alive? That was the question they refused to answer as they collected the rocks and stones in bags and threw them into the sea.
November 24, 2025 at 3:10 PM
andrewkozma.net
The governor ruled from jail as it was, he said, the only secure place in the state.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of the Governor's Palace in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It shows a low, one-story building made of adobe that is the length of an entire block. Logs are used as columns and logs also poke out of the wall at ceiling height, apparently used as beams. A few people hang out under the overhang and some trees loom over the back of the palace. A flag hangs limply on its pole. The back reads: The governor ruled from jail as it was, he said proudly, the only secure place in the state. It was clean and safe, especially after all the prisoners had been released in order to provide room for the governor and his staff. The food wasn't great, admittedly, but there was plenty of it, and contraband could get you the good stuff, the governor quickly learned. It was only then he regretted giving up smoking. The prisoners released went back to their lives and the country, as a whole, prospered, every other state taking inspiration form the governor's bold plan. The leaders put themselves in prison and sent out their edicts daily. The messages were ignored. It was a time of joy, for a time.
November 18, 2025 at 5:18 PM
andrewkozma.net
We all want to live in the old town.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a picture of La Placita Old Town Plaza in Albuquerque, new Mexico. One long, single-story building takes up one side of a street, with trees glancing over top of it. The building has wooden pillars running along the overhang, and a number of people are walking under it. Text painted on the building reads La Placita Dining Rooms. The back reads: We all want to live in the old town. The old town is simply better. We all remember it that way. Too beautiful to be real. The sunlight soft like honey on the tongue, sticky in memory, all the nostalgia melting in the mouth and the mind like cotton candy. We all want to live in the old town, but the new town is all we have. The dust doesn't glow in the sunlight. The air is empty of taste or feeling. We breathe our yearning. We pay for parking, and still our cars are towed away.
November 17, 2025 at 3:13 PM
andrewkozma.net
He wanted to be entombed in a statue.
A postcard, front and back. The front is a series of three pictures around text reading Troldhaugen Nina og Edvard Griegs Hjem. The pictures are 1. A wooden house in the woods surrounded only by greenery 2. The inside of that house, a corner of a room with a piano, a desk, a window, the wood all natural and 3. A metal statue I assume to be of Edvard Grieg also surrounded by greenery as if abandoned in the wilderness. The back reads: Dear F, you remember the old man who lived at the end of the lane, just where the land started to drop into the valley choked with thorns, nameless because everyone refused to go there? Well, when he died, he decided that instead of burial or cremation, he wanted to be entombed in a statue, forever standing and looking out over the property he once owned. Where his eyes were, they put heavy-duty glass, though the rest was bronze, a metal replica of his body reproduced to his idealized specifications. Now, he looks down into that thorn-choked valley. Now, every day on my walk I come to stand by his body in its new home and wonder at what rate he's rotting, forever denied a kind return to the Earth we've all sprung from. The statue has already cracked in the first freeze. At times, I can hear a moaning as the wind passes by. ~A
November 13, 2025 at 3:14 PM
andrewkozma.net
The way you pray is by climbing the stairs.
A postcard, front and back. The front shows the famous stairway chapel of Loretto in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The picture is of an ornate church, all white, with pillars and hanging lamps and statues. To the right of the room is a spiral staircase leading up to, well, whatever it is leading to isn't pictured. The back reads: The way you pray is by climbing the stairs. The miracle is that the stairs never end. Climb the spiral steps until, near the roof, darkness consumes all light, and your climb, step by step, takes you into a cold void. You will shiver even during the hottest day of summer. And after your entire body shakes with the chill, you will find yourself climbing up those spiral stairs from the basement of this church that has no basement. Once you pray in the church, climbing anywhere will express your devotion. Often, through prayer, you will find yourself again climbing up into the church, as if you always meant to be here.
November 12, 2025 at 3:45 PM
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
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
andrewkozma.net
I ordered delivery.
October 7, 2025 at 1:27 AM
andrewkozma.net
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