Issue 9: Conor Carville (for Peter Robinson)

After ‘Spring Snow’ 

Someone has come between you and me

and the big picture: the Japanese girl

who turns away from it all

and endeavours to shut

the door of her cab, the hack

in which she was hoping to flee

the extinction event,

the singularity of light

that sizzles on the smoking nitrate.

Not a cab.

A Model T Ford. Its period interior

cooked up in Jeff Wall’s Vancouver,

where the pilotless ships

from Kowloon and Kobe

economize by never stopping,

slowing instead to a shuddering throb

while the great containers

levitate, rising up of their own accord

like Warhol’s silver balloons,

filling the air as if

they were filled with air

instead of widgets

and mobility scooters,

frying pans and superconductors,

as if they were leveraged

by nothing at all, or by something

as thin as the hiss that leaks

from the security guard’s discreet earpiece

as he comes between you and me

and the big picture.

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