OutageBy Alvin Wong
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the room empties
air conditioning dies out without stirrings, the vast floor’s pool eats at flattened walls the ambient hums gone, ears begin to fall a scream of elongated chimes heard from the lakes of a hose rinsing down alleyways, dampened road if tunnels can act as containers for dislocated voices, mended by passing cars and adverts for a common background now we’ve shed our past at airports the glass doors permit new identities the concrete expressways soar to new life thinking of the radios that clicked at the knob’s turn the needle slides to a different station simple machines from a grade school science unit toy dump trucks demonstrate gravity how the fingers stay to the side, a simple touch our conversations where we were adrift between replies to prolong an answer, will it sustain or be an epithet between half remembered faces lost after a coffee a rain drop creates a space that ripples but it was during a power outage I ran outside to see the painted outlines of homes where I wondered if the still-lit roads shattered the earth with electricity and we can see the whole of half-flickered memories Spacetime at the BeachBy Alvin Wong
have you seen cerulean
when oceans are clear at shore aquariums of fish in pet store caverns blue lights and orange scales has gold now become particles then solids kept behind a vault for when we change states, will it be loam as new soil new life when we feared barren planets craters without heat and we hope that in new air gravity slows our fall through the concrete when our feet land on the surface could we go on past rock past the mountain where we place ourselves to reach an afterlife, reserved in the sky outside of our hands finding luminescent creatures with tendrils the tiled floor of a fountain wavers Enjoy Your StayBy Alvin Wong
at an eighth-floor balcony
I look down thinking if I fall down eight stories I would be flat as those small yards, ripped gazebo under our temporary flight on this balcony only then could I sway between the hardwood floors bent grass and leaves patch the walling the mats on the terrace like hardened soil the sounds of airplanes touch the coast music weighs on a stereo almost thinking of another life where we were meant to live in temporary experiences Alvin Wong is a fifth-year Theatre Studies student at York University, minoring in Creative Writing with a certificate in Urban Studies. He is the senior editor of Inspiritus Press, where he also leads the Crossroads Literary Festival on his campus. He has been published in Half A Grapefruit Magazine.
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