Winner of the EXTINCTION Essay Contest, selected by Lacy M. Johnson
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The theme of this special issue was inspired, in part, by a late night Google search a few years ago. Amidst growing conversation in the United States and the world over about
electrocardiogram / don’t look at the line that flattens / without leaping first, still sleeping / ahead of undiscovered country / and the singing to remain here,
They say finch is in the attic running out of songs to sing / tracking circles on sun-dusted floorboards for the
Among the yucca & buggy whips the desert thrums with domestic bliss. They set up store window dummies in cotton dresses, skewed wigs. Cigarette-hewn khaki men
Replacing my veins
Or so I could have believed
From the lupine-light way
You hid your skin within my skin
Beyond the off-white metal door
down the hall past the electric chair
and the dank room where men use
the flying carpet to splay women
In a country prone
to teaching royalty
above all
the hunt,
I’ll throw in my own
two cents
A seat at a table. It’s a foldable chair. The kind that comes in beige or gray. The kind that everyone will help stack on racks at the end of evening.
Every Monday morning we gather on the sagging sofas, some of us crosslegged, holding cushions to our chests, and report on the week’s cases.
It’s cold in Norway this time of year and the nights are short. The sun goes down just before 11PM and comes up again at four in the morning. I thought it