Stacie Barry
Stacie Barry writes:
I'm currently living in Missoula, Montana, while getting by as a historian. I started writing poetry as a girl when I realized that it could help me sleep better than praying. Currently I'm putting together a zine with a few other writers called UMVER, which should be out early next year.
I Sold You, You Sold Me
(a poem in Newspeak)
>From the age of pavement
>From the age of split seconds I salute:
Not files
Not papers
Not pictures
No need
No mini
No maxi
No need
Minus time
Minus space
Plus persons
Plus statues
Plus corporations undead
Freeway, landfill, proving grounds
Newthink bellyfeels prolefeed
Old behind
Old below
Oldthink always new
Victory is apathy
Under Glass
That terrible dream again last night. Always when I’m not ready, always in the morning when the light looks like a campfire with white logs on the bottom. Something is standing over me watching and I wake up to banish it. The shadow thins as I reach for the light and for one brief second the room is lit with the explosion of the light bulb. I push the little black switch back and forth and decide to get out of the room. The hall light disappears as I enter and make my way to the light and twist the gold knob on the stand. It sparks blue then black. I begin scrambling pushing buttons, smelling sulfur and the little toy piano in my back closet begins to play- working hard at not becoming a song. There is this little light on in the window so I know the power is on and then the phone begins. I grab it and it keeps ringing. But the receiver is cold and silent, as if all other sounds were poured into the ringing. I get weak, unable to run out into the light that is streaming through the curtains. It’s landing in squares on the carpet and I fall, hoping it can give me the strength to get to the door. Then it begins to come though the cracks in the walls but it isn’t helping, it’s obliterating me. And I see the shadow in the hallway and I know its one or the other. Then I wake up shaking.
Stacie Burns