Into the Neon World

Connor Fisher

 

The laughing alphabet looks out from behind orange curtains.

 

It believes memory is a form, something like a fastidious glass house.

 

In the empty lot across the cul-de-sac: a coyote, a vole, a third type of animal.

 

It creeps away from a crow’s carcass and towards the infinite edge of a forest.

 

A woman clatters redundant strokes onto the mechanical typewriter.

 

She doesn’t get to pick and choose which inked striker leaves a mark.

 

Sounds emerge from air’s stillness with the urgency of a held breath.

 

And above, clouds of pollen billow and fold in the naked air.

 

The animals, the pollen … they will never cower in the blue surrounding the black earth.