The Known and the Unknown

I don’t play video games.

My husband does and,
sometimes, I watch, suspended
in my space,
while he controls the action in his.

In Silent Hill, we shared
the eerie corridors, the abandoned
fairground,
the empty streets of a ghost town.

We searched with the protagonist
for his missing daughter, avoided
or killed zombies that roamed,
and were terrified

when the phone rang
in an empty shopping mall
and the caller was
the lost child.

On the threshold
of new technology
leading to
new worlds,

was never quite there,
I never had control —
it was always out of my hands,
out of my comfort zone.

Kim M. Russell, 20th June 2024

I missed Dora’s Poetry in Liminal Spaces Poetics prompt at the dVerse Poets Pub last week, as I was away, but I’m taking the opportunity to write a poem to it .

I love the William Blake quote with which Dora opened her prompt and which gave me the title for my poem. I also enjoyed Tawada Yōko’s exploration of temporary comradery with men in the liminal space of a train platform in an excerpt from his poem ‘Cigarette’, as well as the idea of the poet’s relation to the liminal in Denis Johnson’s ‘Now’, both of which made me think of the liminal space of a video game.

13 thoughts on “The Known and the Unknown”

    1. I don’t know them. My husband only plays games with puzzles to solve, with Gothic undertones, or with zombies! Our favourite is by far The Last of Us.

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  5. Love the liminal spaces in this poem, your own as you watch the gameplay cocooned from the action, the game’s own gothic environment and the threshold of technology that creates such a space.. All transfixing in their own way, awaiting movement, awaiting the next zombie around the corner, the next advance in gameplay— this intermediate space. I’ve been in the same position as you, Kim, watching someone else play “Silent Hill” and it is decidedly unsettling. I love your take on the prompt! 😊

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