The Dyer's Hand

This was near the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River just before Civil War time. The dyer had

turned his hand blue. His kin tried different solutions for days but couldn’t undye it, so they dyed his whole body blue, or most of it, with tri-spirals drawn for no reason but what they’d seen on merestones a couple miles away—old property markings, probably, or parts of spells that hardened boundaries, or even, contrariwise, opened them up, what that sometime rank wind was all about.

Harrison Fisher has published twelve poetry titles since 1977, most recently Poematics of the Hyperbloody Real. In 2026, he has new work appearing in ANTAE, BlazeVOX, Book of Matches, Eastern Iowa Review, Misfitmagazine, and other publications. He lives in upstate New York.