By: Wes Civilz

Featured art: Murol in the Snow by Victor Charreton

« For three days, no coffee;
               there were headaches »

« On the fourth day, I have coffee again »
« My frozen intelligence melts open,
               sizzling with otherworldly light,
               but two hours later a slight sadness
               and a fading of the perfect coffee feeling »
« Then comes a desire for beer »
« Then a quick feeling that now
               is a moment I could be bored,
               if I was a person who got bored,
               but I am not »
« It is, however, too early in the day for beer
               so I do the dishes, and observe that soap bubbles
               are sly jokes told by the goddess of spheres »

« I drive to the dump, aka, the transfer station,
               where I will transfer the waste of my life
               into a cavernous compactor »
« (Other, more privileged things get to be recycled) »
« I behold the shapes of packaging
               that held the things that I used—
               that I used up »
« They are not lacking in beauty if looked at correctly:
               plastic casing with two bulb shapes for headphones;
               wax paper in the shape of a soap bar;
               browning skin of a banana »
« Someone else will worry about them now »

« When I get home and see the dishes are done
               I experience, oddly, a desire to do more dishes »
« I enter the Internet via my laptop and receive my stiff daily dose
               of helplessness regarding our world »
« Our world is apparently a grasping amoeba of cars
               and weapons and cash and smiles and cute cats »
« Also, unluckily,
               I stumble onto a picture of a dead cat »

« It is still too early for beer »
« If only I would only want things when
               it was the right time to have them »
« If only I would want only the right things »

« A wasp patrols the living room even though it is winter »
« A large man clears the driveway with a plow-bearing truck »
« My father returns from his trip to town »
« The grandfather clock ticks but does not annoy »
« A tentacle of sunlight tickles my arm »
« This is when I notice the morning fog
               has forgotten to remain »

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Wes Civilz lives in the forests of New Hampshire. He posts micropoems on Instagram under the handle @wes_civilz, and his longer work has appeared in journals such as The Antioch Review, The Threepenny Review, Arts & Letters, and Quarterly West.