4 by jay winston ritchie
DOG EAT DOG
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The mall has secret tunnels
that lead to other parts of the mall. Meet me by the solar-powered trash compactor. I get off on being young. I am older than myself. Am I “Goin’ to Acapulco”? White guilt is unhelpful. I traded In Utero for 26 oz. of Bombay Sapphire. I was young, I lived in a Doggy Dog world. Post- postmodern subjects are renovating the imitation. A band called Suuns and a band called Sunn O))). Inside of me there is another me asking for more money. There’s a bottle of vodka in the basement. The optometrist asked Monica some very personal questions. I would love some Percocet. Nothing. Nothing. A pigeon. Its foot. Nothing. This is really intelligent like “slutting it up” in my twenties. I watch shafts of light slant through the trees. I watch a fly struggle to escape from a spider’s web and come up with a good analogy for getting into an argument on Facebook. How much money do I need? That fruit plate is stunning. |
AUGUST SLOUGH
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I did not go with the rest of the class
to see the meteor shower. It happened anyway. It’s difficult to be at the bar and to be a lilac bush simultaneously. I followed a rabbit made of light along the train tracks. I went there. Say hi to the image for me. The sun is always tea bagging me. It’s art movie night at Guillaume’s. The afterparty attendee thought my books were a cake? Yes, I would like a glitter gradient. My friend Kaity is in a band called “Lungbutter.” Do starfish dream of squares? Do I overshare by holding back? It’s my neighbour’s most languorous Fiat weekend. If Henrika’s ankle were here I’d suck on it. We go together like water. |
IN WATERMELON SUGAR
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At the top of the hill is the Canadian Centre
for Architecture. Dental school was just around the corner. The sheer possibility. I had a good time hunting salamanders. When Allen Ginsberg went to Prague the kids were excited! Every tree is powered by the nuclear power plant in the sky. I cried in my dad’s SUV. Home is a fishing rod that catches the remaining trout in me. I am afraid to know the bottom of a body of water. Anybody. Ali took me to a park that was a square. I guess she wanted to ruin Montreal permanently. Out here searching for the ultimate Cho Chang. One thing death and winning the lottery have in common is suddenness. I drank red wine and coped like an adult. My mom was impressed that I walked? The detective in cop clothes wants to know. |
CLICKABLE INTERIOR
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I put on my noise-canceling headphones.
Silence makes my bedroom bigger: A planet where I am the core. The city is a distant star. I remember a word I do not know. I look it up in my e-dictionary: A literal quasar is my figurative lodestar. The city is an asterisk (star, 2nd def.). Funny that I can minimize a window. |
JAY WINSTON RITCHIE is the author of the poetry chapbook How to Appear Perfectly Indifferent While Crying on the Inside (Metatron, 2014) and the short story collection Something You Were, Might Have Been, or Have Come to Represent (Insomniac, 2014). He is editor-in-chief of The Void magazine at Concordia University in Montreal. Visit him at jaywinstonritchie.tumblr.com.
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