Nine Hands for One Skeleton

Kuniyoshi signed the skeleton three times, once per sheet, because the monster is wider than any single block of cherry. Go to the second sheet, where the neck vertebrae stack above Mitsukuni's head: every bone is a clean knife-cut in wood, made by a carver whose name the label does not carry. And where the left hand takes the palace blind, the slats bend like wet reeds while the bones stay dry. Those are the inches that own me.

So my first picture is the shop, not the spectre. Three blocks on one bench, each holding its third of a skeleton. The bench runs out of the frame on both sides because the work does not stop where the picture does. Five printers make ten hands, but one hand is always on the teapot, so the skeleton gets nine — and if the monster ever stands up whole, it will be because those nine agreed on the registration marks, which is the only kind of magic I plan to practice here.