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somethingdarkerThe choice between this post and these others, Potential Titles: Matter - Specific Substances [category] or Go to Potential Titles: Sensory Adjacent [category], can be somewhat arbitrary, so maybe check those, too.
Acid.
Acrid.
Aerosol:
Inside of a pillar of aerosol blue - Angela Liu "An Interrogation About a Monster During Sleep Paralysis"
Alloy.
Amalgam:
Amalgams of pilfered string and whittled sticks - Allison Joseph "My Father's Kites"
Artificial:
An artificial wilderness and a sky like lead - W.H. Auden "The Shield of Achilles"
Entered the cities of artificial light and killed - Joy Harjo "A Map to the Next World"
Artificial flowers bloom in the dead bodies of universes - Jong-Ki Lim "The Fall of Snakes"
Ash.
Catalyst.
Caustic:
Learned to swim in the caustic water - Elizabeth Alexander "Haircut"
A galleon on the caustic waters - William Brewer "Resolution"
Some heartsick caustic titan - Amaud Jamaul Johnson "Raising Hell"
Must endure the caustics that effect a cure - Eliza Lucy Leonard "The Miller and His Golden Dream"
Cinder.
Clump.
Coarse.
Composite:
In our separateness and composites - Joseph O. Legaspi "Vows (for a gay wedding)"
Compost:
Mugwort, red clover, firethorn for compost & company - L. Lamar Wilson "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed to Ernest Hemingway"
Compound.
Contaminate:
Arrived to replace those contaminated by dust - Andrea Carter Brown "On Reading Allen Ginsberg's 'Homework'"
Wish not to contaminate the guiltless - Euripedes "Hercules Distracted" transl. by Michael Wodhull
Crystal.
Dirt.
Dollop:
Savor this dollop of alchemy - Mike Allen "Freebasing the Moon"
Dust.
Elastic.
Fiber/Fibrous.
Film/Filmy.
Fluid.
Foam.
Foil.
Froth.
Fume.
Garbage.
Gas/Gasoline.
Granulated:
Collecting the granulated wind - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Richer than Anyone in Heaven"
Echoes off a canister of granulated sugar - Andre F. Peltier "Let the Rigatoni Be My Reeds"
Grease.
Grist:
Children made vapor, families ground to grist - Cynthia Dewi Oka "American Abyss"
Homogeneous:
Croesus and Job united in one homogeneous effort - Walter Léon Hess "Feline Philosophy by Thomas Cat: Forty-Fifth Caterwaul"
Infusion.
Liquid.
Material.
Matter.
Miasma:
Carries the cruel miasma of ash - Devan Barlow "A Tree, At Peace" [Strange Horizons 31 March 2025]
Miasmas steaming up from sunless fens - G.H.H. "Night and Morning" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)
The miasmatic mist of the soul of the lonely - Sade Iverson "The Milliner" [The Little Review v.1 no.5, July 1914]
Afloat in their ancient miasma - Mary Karr "Metaphysique du Mal"
start with any miasma dispersed - Asiya Wadud "attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]"
Mineral.
Mixture.
Mud.
Noxious:
Noxious things of earth and air - Edmund Beale Sargant "The Cuckoo Wood" [Georgian Poetry 1911-1912]
Ore.
Ossify:
Hallucinations of her ossified granite frame - Holly Easton "In the Age of Dreams" [Strange Horizons 21 July 2025]
Oxidation:
The oxidized face of a statue of some goddess - Ari Banias "Curriculum"
Our oxidation too slow for the tasks at hand - M. Bartley Seigel "Broken Cartographies"
Particle.
Paste:
From the paste and paper of myself - William Brewer "Ode to Suboxone"
Paste winter over this last week of August - David Hornibrook "Some Instructions"
A memory pasted in the heart's scrapbook - Richard Jackson "String Theory"
With a paste of cloves and wild honey - Thomas James "Mummy of a Lady Named JemutesonekhXXI Dynasty"
Canvases of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste - Dean Young "Peach Farm" [Poetry June 2012]
Plasma:
Tastes the day's first plasma of leaf - Jan Beatty "I'll Write the Girl"
Leaves behind us swirling in our plasma trail - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "Long Voyage"
Tell our tales of plasma waves - Ann K. Schwader "Void Music"
Pollute.
Porous:
There is always something porous in the decorous - Josh Bell "One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism"
The Porous Plaster wins because it sticks - Wallace Irwin "The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor"
Avenues porous with ill-built adornments - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"
The porous weight that follows echo - Edwin Torres "The Intermission Clown"
Powder.
Pristine.
Pulp:
just grayish pulp - Elizabeth Bartlett "cold wakening"
Slow pulp of arithmetic - Kiki Petrosino "Louisa County Patrol Claims, 1770-1863"
Pulped and vectored like a virus - Bruce Smith "Ferment"
For a dinner date with the pulpy sun - Katrina Vandenberg "Tomatoes"
Radioactive.
Residue.
Rust.
Sediment.
Slick.
Sludge:
Vomits up the sludge of abandonment - Fargo Tbaki "Palestine Is a Futurism: The Dream"
Slurry:
Arsenic slurry caged behind a dam - Melissa Range "Flat as a Flitter"
Smoke.
Solid.
Solid State:
From solid state to a state of change - Yang Licai "All Human Beings Who Suffer" transl. by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu
Soot.
Steam.
Vapor.
Viscous:
douse this blackness in viscous castor oil - Neha Maqsood "Things I Do to Remember Home"
into viscous fossil wine - Avi Silver "Passing Diamonds"
Wholesome.
See also (many things that ought to be here, too, are likely buried elsewhere):
Go to Potential Titles: Art/Craft: Tools and Materials [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Elements - Chemical [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Metals [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks - Pretty Ones [category].
Navigation Links:
Go to author indices.
Go to word indices.
Go to category indices.
Acid.
Acrid.
Aerosol:
Inside of a pillar of aerosol blue - Angela Liu "An Interrogation About a Monster During Sleep Paralysis"
Alloy.
Amalgam:
Amalgams of pilfered string and whittled sticks - Allison Joseph "My Father's Kites"
Artificial:
An artificial wilderness and a sky like lead - W.H. Auden "The Shield of Achilles"
Entered the cities of artificial light and killed - Joy Harjo "A Map to the Next World"
Artificial flowers bloom in the dead bodies of universes - Jong-Ki Lim "The Fall of Snakes"
Ash.
Catalyst.
Caustic:
Learned to swim in the caustic water - Elizabeth Alexander "Haircut"
A galleon on the caustic waters - William Brewer "Resolution"
Some heartsick caustic titan - Amaud Jamaul Johnson "Raising Hell"
Must endure the caustics that effect a cure - Eliza Lucy Leonard "The Miller and His Golden Dream"
Cinder.
Clump.
Coarse.
Composite:
In our separateness and composites - Joseph O. Legaspi "Vows (for a gay wedding)"
Compost:
Mugwort, red clover, firethorn for compost & company - L. Lamar Wilson "Lauren Oya Olamina Explains Earthseed to Ernest Hemingway"
Compound.
Contaminate:
Arrived to replace those contaminated by dust - Andrea Carter Brown "On Reading Allen Ginsberg's 'Homework'"
Wish not to contaminate the guiltless - Euripedes "Hercules Distracted" transl. by Michael Wodhull
Crystal.
Dirt.
Dollop:
Savor this dollop of alchemy - Mike Allen "Freebasing the Moon"
Dust.
Elastic.
Fiber/Fibrous.
Film/Filmy.
Fluid.
Foam.
Foil.
Froth.
Fume.
Garbage.
Gas/Gasoline.
Granulated:
Collecting the granulated wind - Jennifer Elise Foerster "Richer than Anyone in Heaven"
Echoes off a canister of granulated sugar - Andre F. Peltier "Let the Rigatoni Be My Reeds"
Grease.
Grist:
Children made vapor, families ground to grist - Cynthia Dewi Oka "American Abyss"
Homogeneous:
Croesus and Job united in one homogeneous effort - Walter Léon Hess "Feline Philosophy by Thomas Cat: Forty-Fifth Caterwaul"
Infusion.
Liquid.
Material.
Matter.
Miasma:
Carries the cruel miasma of ash - Devan Barlow "A Tree, At Peace" [Strange Horizons 31 March 2025]
Miasmas steaming up from sunless fens - G.H.H. "Night and Morning" (from The Knickerbocker, v. 23:3, March 1844)
The miasmatic mist of the soul of the lonely - Sade Iverson "The Milliner" [The Little Review v.1 no.5, July 1914]
Afloat in their ancient miasma - Mary Karr "Metaphysique du Mal"
start with any miasma dispersed - Asiya Wadud "attention as a form of ethics [excerpt]"
Mineral.
Mixture.
Mud.
Noxious:
Noxious things of earth and air - Edmund Beale Sargant "The Cuckoo Wood" [Georgian Poetry 1911-1912]
Ore.
Ossify:
Hallucinations of her ossified granite frame - Holly Easton "In the Age of Dreams" [Strange Horizons 21 July 2025]
Oxidation:
The oxidized face of a statue of some goddess - Ari Banias "Curriculum"
Our oxidation too slow for the tasks at hand - M. Bartley Seigel "Broken Cartographies"
Particle.
Paste:
From the paste and paper of myself - William Brewer "Ode to Suboxone"
Paste winter over this last week of August - David Hornibrook "Some Instructions"
A memory pasted in the heart's scrapbook - Richard Jackson "String Theory"
With a paste of cloves and wild honey - Thomas James "Mummy of a Lady Named JemutesonekhXXI Dynasty"
Canvases of crushed lightbulbs and screws in paste - Dean Young "Peach Farm" [Poetry June 2012]
Plasma:
Tastes the day's first plasma of leaf - Jan Beatty "I'll Write the Girl"
Leaves behind us swirling in our plasma trail - David C. Kopaska-Merkel "Long Voyage"
Tell our tales of plasma waves - Ann K. Schwader "Void Music"
Pollute.
Porous:
There is always something porous in the decorous - Josh Bell "One Shies at the Prospect of Raising Yet Another Defense of Cannibalism"
The Porous Plaster wins because it sticks - Wallace Irwin "The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor"
Avenues porous with ill-built adornments - Adrian Matejka "16 Bars Poetica"
The porous weight that follows echo - Edwin Torres "The Intermission Clown"
Powder.
Pristine.
Pulp:
just grayish pulp - Elizabeth Bartlett "cold wakening"
Slow pulp of arithmetic - Kiki Petrosino "Louisa County Patrol Claims, 1770-1863"
Pulped and vectored like a virus - Bruce Smith "Ferment"
For a dinner date with the pulpy sun - Katrina Vandenberg "Tomatoes"
Radioactive.
Residue.
Rust.
Sediment.
Slick.
Sludge:
Vomits up the sludge of abandonment - Fargo Tbaki "Palestine Is a Futurism: The Dream"
Slurry:
Arsenic slurry caged behind a dam - Melissa Range "Flat as a Flitter"
Smoke.
Solid.
Solid State:
From solid state to a state of change - Yang Licai "All Human Beings Who Suffer" transl. by Joshua Edwards and Lynn Xu
Soot.
Steam.
Vapor.
Viscous:
douse this blackness in viscous castor oil - Neha Maqsood "Things I Do to Remember Home"
into viscous fossil wine - Avi Silver "Passing Diamonds"
Wholesome.
See also (many things that ought to be here, too, are likely buried elsewhere):
Go to Potential Titles: Art/Craft: Tools and Materials [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Elements - Chemical [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Metals [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks [category].
Go to Potential Titles: Rocks - Pretty Ones [category].
Navigation Links:
Go to author indices.
Go to word indices.
Go to category indices.
