Heather June Gibbons
Border Town
Everyone in costume for cocktails, half of us hating each other. Pete jokes, uses Canada
as a metaphor for lack. My Canadian girlfriend (I don’t have a girlfriend), the
conversation we’re not having (about Canada). He takes a last swig and follows me
home like a hot shadow.I murmur a list of sad things to help him sleep: Murphy beds, pogs, the crescent sag of
a white slip, papers flying out of hands in a windy intersection, the smell of singed hair.
Pete’s mouth is tense. He stares down the nightlight.I dream an annotated bibliography. Then I’m in a piece of fiction, but must also write
comments in the margins. It is exhausting.We sit on milk crates in the kitchen, listening to coffee percolate. Pete says he dreamed
of pietistic movements, foliage on Virgin Gorda, slits in fine paper for photo corners, the
push of feet through the real magenta on fall leaves, and beachcombing with Morca, the
living Flamenco legend in town.