ISSUE V
Francis de Lima
98 ways to say apocalypse
The morning she died there was a pure white pigeon in the yard and it didn’t mean anything. Death as a mundane thing. The regular state of problems. To be loved is to be known when you don’t want to be. Want to be null. Squeezing more out of this confusion. The termites chewing bark look like initials. Look like lovers. You look like me. Bootlegging Sertraline in Moscow. The rotation of the earth happens. Time is imagined. Imagine. I couldn’t imagine that you’d still spend time tilling the sky, sowing the ocean’s windmills. For every extraordinary lifetime you lived a hundred ordinary ones and did not hate them. It is hard to represent nothingness. Nothingness could be time. Could be the rotation of the earth. Could be the lovers’ initials. But heaven was playing tennis with you two. Have you noticed? Science does to the spirit what grammar does to language. Meaning-making machine. The machine only meant we were able to make more with the same. If the city is a biosphere each niche is occupied. It is the friends we made along the way but in this one you lose everyone. In this one you go home empty handed. You drink the beer from the fridge and sit on the couch with money in your bank account. All that exists of reality is the slice you perceive. But otherwise you’re good. You’re so good.
Francis de Lima is a Finnish-Brazilian poet and translator, currently living in the UK. They’ve collaborated extensively, mainly with Finnish underground artists, on projects like art books, albums, and performances at venues ranging from concert halls to backyards. Their work can be found in magazines like ONLY POEMS! and the engine(idling as well as in Wild Roof Journal and they hold an undergraduate degree in American Literature and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway. They spend their summers living, working, and writing at the lighthouse-island of Bengtskär and are interested in the intersections between class, practical ecology, poetry, and wildlife.