The Only Man for the Job

By Christopher Evans

Ten years later, they call my father
out of retirement. From the bunker
of decommissioned neckties, he
summons other boys in blue
blazers, the old team together
for one final policy heist,
the Ocean’s Eleven of softwood
lumber tax disputes.
 
You could kill a person with a necktie,
choke the life right out of them
if you were that type of someone.
I suspect my father is not,
but isn’t it nice to know
the potential is there.

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Hummingbirds

By Christopher Evans

When I was a child, my parents hung
a plastic feeder in our yard, and the hummingbirds
came to quench themselves on sugar water
and food colouring, supernatural, dazzling bodies
to hover and zip, like emeralds, amethysts— 
 
No, they were eagles, that’s right, noble
and terrifying, swoop and piercing screech,
troughs of salmon, patio besmirched with carrion, my siblings
and I cowering under rattan tables, gulping tears
we clung together in matching turtlenecks— 
 
Hold up, I was an only child and those siblings: raccoons, childlike
hands stealing bread from my plate to soak
in the birdbath, always diseased, sick from carbs, I
was given instruction by my parents to herd the dead ones
to the compost heap with a thick-bristled push broom— 
 
Nope, now I remember, it was a government facility and I, an orphan
they tested the strength of familial bonds
through removal, myself one of the placebo group
brothers and sisters just straw-filled mannequins, unsmiling
I felt nothing when they were torn from me— 
 
Wait, wait a minute, I survived budget cuts, graduated
from mannequin-stuffer to lead researcher, long white coat, immaculate,
slow scramble up the ladder, a heavy binder
compiled my findings, birthed a report
titled You Can Never Go Home Again— 
 
Actually, hang on a sec, it was upon my retirement
from the Conservation Society that I, after years of service
in the name of my avian kin, wanting nothing more
than to share that calming murmur and drone with my grandchildren,
molted my white coat and hung a plastic feeder in the yard.

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Christopher Evans writes, edits, and teaches in Vancouver, BC. His work has appeared in The Literary Review, Going Down Swinging, The Moth, Grain, and more, and was shortlisted for the 2018 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. For better or worse, he is on Twitter: @ChrisPDEvans.