Fenestral, an F-story

I'm gearing to do all 26 level, god willing and the crick don't rise for Penny Fuller’s “The A-Z of Unusual Words Challenge”. I've done A-E and this is letter F. (See About Challenge section for the link to the challenge information.)

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The search for an odd f-word

This one was super hard. I settled on a word pretty quickly because the surface definition was interesting, but I discovered it had bigoted origins so I discarded it just as quickly.

I started combing lists and was instantly attracted to juvenile options, like fucoid and futtock (which Dana Crandell handily grabbed here for the challenge) but I realized I wasn't in the mood to write juvenile humor this week. Which is odd for me because I love juvenile humor. Its not that I didn't want to (I'm positively fescennine [1]), but that I didn't think I could pull it off well if I wasn't in a groove.

I'll probably put a complete list of childishly tempting f-words in its own document, as now I have a vision to write something using all of them, and then translate it into the non-titillation tale it really would be. Perhaps I could write a series of limericks like Katarzyna Popiel did here.

But toilet humor list of F-words aside, I combed and combed for days. And finally I found (drumroll please): Fenestral

I found it here but we'll use different definition sources in the definition section.

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[1] fescennine (adjective) - fes·​cen·​nine: scurrilous, obscene

Meaning to me: Fenestral

When I saw the word "Fenestral" I knew it's related to defenestration, but defenestration (tossing someone out a window) and fenestral (pertaining to an aperture or window) have totally different vibes. Defenestration feels like a mix of menstruation and castration and evisceration and evacuation. Fenestral gives me a soaring feeling, like cathedral ceilings arcing orchestral, or a mossy chapel, or a fennec fox bounding astral, or the lifting of the windbound wings of a kestrel. Even its nouns - fenestra and fenestrae, sound elegantly mythical, and mushroom gilled magical.

Definition

This one is tricky because the definitions ranged from relating to windows to biology or other science inclinations. All of them connect to openings or apertures in which things can go through, or in the case of certain insects, illusions in their wings that look like such openings.

The Poem

Spider webs

Your golden ratio of strings and chords rise in dissonant eloquence—

You once had a fennec fox that married under sunlit showers; when I whispered pitter patters, you giggled and slipped away, preferring to ride raccoons through the eye of a moth—

Demons sing deeper into woods fenestral, where hope lights gently in the word. If slugs could find the pinprick in the tunnel, angels could find me here—

My ear bones quiver, wishes slipping through the slit—

Raise the sash for just a moment, let the spring rain in; god's breath upon the baby's gasp lays halos on the grove...

All you have to do to find me is press one leg-one leg into glass; marbles won't accept you but black holes will, I promise—

All you have to promise, to press me, like blackholed petals, is leg on through the looking glass. Alice couldn't find the well; time couldn't send her home—

But you, fenestral, like the copse, demons singing sweetly, you fenestral like my bones, can always slip the leash.

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As always I like to put a picture of what it would look like in print or another digital form, since vocal's platform doesn't really do justice to visual poetic form

About the Challenge

Penny Fuller is running “The A-Z of Unusual Words Challenge” which is an unnoficial challenge (meaning she's not vocal staff, but is a vocal contributor who does this for fun) that does every letter of the alphabet, This is letter F. It's November, so A, B, C, D and E are over, but you can find my entries for those here, here, here, here, and here.

About me

I'm a long time lurker, recently popped up to do a little creative writing after having only two pieces up for a ridiculously long time.

They are my favorite pieces and you can find them below if you'd like to take a gander:

Butter Cream: https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/butter-cream%3C/a%3E

When we were young: https://shopping-feedback.today/poets/when-we-were-young-m7bv010dxa%3C/a%3E

Mostly I focus on unofficial challenges by other vocal contributors, (I'm not happy with the terms of Vocal Challenges, so I will not be participating in them. You should read the terms of each one you want to enter carefully. No seriously. Go read each one for each challenge you want to enter. I don't mean the little blurb on the challenge page. I mean click through to the Official Challenge Rules pdf, which each challenge has a buried link to on the individual challenge pages), though I am revising and putting up some stuff that had been in my draft folder forever.

Here's an embed to "When we were young" in case you prefer to click through embeds