by Emily Zuberec

ATLAS

With stiff shoulders from taking my time      	 Through alleys and under the gesture
Of trellises        Tightly packed with the full range of my heart        I collect grapes and feel
prosperity        Marbles rolling along their own trajectory        Like us last year in the badlands
The striations took my silence        And kept working on their tapestry        Footprints of oil
As I accessed dark red verging on black        I thought of a couple I envy        We’re both
oblique in the heat        I went back to wait at the car without you        And there was dust
And other debris        In every crack of my seat        So I was fidgety while you drove        We
know how that ends        Now I’m here plucking grapes        Anticipating        The delight of
swallowing anything whole        That was me in the light waving at you        From the base of
the lookout platform        How could you not tell it was me?

LINAC 4 H

Moon-faced
And choleric like a god
You were born in the evening
A chair collapsed under us
Both with bangs and arm in arm
Nows slipping in a history of oil
It’s difficult to think of when to call
With a time difference and every other sort of difference
You must be looking like how you were meant to
Did you leave the hallway light on through the night?

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Emily Zuberec is a writer living and working in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. She has previously been published by Peach Mag, Afternoon Projects Gallery in Vancouver, April April Gallery in New York City, and Pumice Raft in Toronto. She is the managing editor of Commo Magazine.

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