Twenty-one messages in the answering machine blink a red light. Subject is slumped beside a plastic fishbowl. An automatic air freshener sprays every half-hour like rewind. The desk is ribbed with pens. Radioactivity is often compatible with isolation and, eventually, demise. Subject’s mother crackles the twenty-second message. This is the only time she’s given a voice in the room. Overhead, the light bulb swings like a broken arm. On closer inspection, moth holes on the Subject’s cardigan connect and bleed Ursae Minoris.
Arlene Ang serves as a poetry editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1. A poetry collection, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon, co-written with Valerie Fox, is forthcoming from Texture Press in 2008. Arlene lives in Spinea, Italy. More of her writing may be viewed at leafscape.org.