Horoscope of Positions
For Long Nimble Fingers
Is the title—after two
They’ll let anyone on the air
“Brace yourself
For a little spoken word
“Not poetry
But the hard utterance
“The future is
A cogitating car
“Aflame
Afar
“A talking car
That doesn’t need you
“A ski jacket
That doesn’t suit you”
—after three
It’s a different world,
Hurtling through a braintube,
Nothing but the will to movement,
Technology
Aspiring to light
Ten times ten deer
In the wintry picture
As if it were all one
predetermined schematic
Alas
It is not
And the Atlas
Is not quite it
It is
It was
It will be a whorl of dimly associated nouns:
camshaft, parsec, Angel River, Angel Dust
nothing
Now
The broadcasted seeds of tomorrow
Maize maze flying saucers made
Sibilant noctial hum
Hard to place in space
The heater
That heats your feet and face
Memory’s neon frets you
The parrot says your name
A dome darkens on the idle deer
They pale in the passenger mirror
— Dustin Cole is the author of the novel Notice (Nightwood Editions) and the poetry chapbook Dream Peripheries (General Delivery). He has also contributed writing to APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, Maximus Magazine, Safety Propaganda, BC BookWorld, Heavy Feather Review and the British Columbia Review.