Issue 2.8

Apathy Report It was morning and light streamed through the window as I sipped on my coffee. The weather reporter’s mouth smiled without mirth as he told us: "Floods in Bangladesh, an earthquake in Taiwan, severe blizzards across Estonia. But here in London, it is a bright and breezy day, with glimpses of sunshine." The world charmingly summarized in a cheerful thirty-second burst. Some are dying, and some drowning, and some are freezing, but everything was fine here with the bad coffee and the sunlight that was trying to get in.

Somewhere in West Virginny Snow on the hills, holly, and a smattering of beeches: the whole assemblage resembles Pollock’s *Blue Poles*. An art critic claimed that title was “too distracting.” It’s uncertain if a wooden horse before the walls of Troy is a curse or blessing, if a javelin given time to spear its target lands harder than a cannon’s iron, if a spinal column can apply to poems, whether an Appalachian vista matters or anything beautiful at all.

April Extremes We Canadians forget plums trees blossom in the cold April rainstorms and birds build their nests by weaving between extremes. Building shelter is building resistance. Birds who fly in daring murmuration value stillness by sewing cupolas. Nest is the opposite of sky. Blossom petals grow, as do snowflakes; even the last snow of the final flurry.

Reminiscing out My Bedroom Window It’s a night so dark, I think the sun may just give it all up. I believe it is going to rain. The waking world arrived late today— the rooster with the belting voice was found broken-winged, dog-bitten, spackled with blood. In her dreams beside me, she begins to sweat, as if climbing a ceaseless ladder out of herself. Rung by rung she awakens. A stillness swaddles the world as a mewling baby— the momentum-killer. Some people are just born that way, they can’t help it, you said. A thousand exhales— the wind picks up against the leaves, and rain begins to fall.

Would You Some Tea, Maybe? In the Kettle. It’s one of the great things about living in such a low-rent place—the low rent itself aside— the walls are thin and I get to enjoy domesticities offered to my better-placed neighbors. Maybe not better-placed; I’ve chosen to live here alone, and I don’t regret it. It’s nice to walk into a house with all the lights off and nothing stirring and to be concerned for a second, every day, before checking on the bony cat sprawled near my bed. Clean up the smells that shouldn’t be there, get my tie off and slump into this television-facing sofa, a cup of instant coffee in hand. Sipping in this silence is something I wouldn’t trade for all the doting I hear these impressions of. I would be lying, though, if I didn’t say I hoped, every day, to come home to another pair of eyes dancing, a sloping song foreign to me playing, a lie, offered in a voice that isn’t just an echo. One evening, maybe; till then, alone.