if we sit here any longer, someone will fill the windshield with tea sets
(or fading layers of convenience store advertising)
the mural on the corner is moving faster than we are
(right away there are things I like about you)
our conversation about the natural predators of everything we build
(ice eats road, rust eats car, fire eats everything)
your carnivorous laugh and death-defying lines of reasoning
(time has the biggest teeth, traffic eats time)
consolation in the grip of rush hour on Booth Street
(everyone but you despises a commute)
creeping along until the instinctive leap through the lights at Eccles
(because: red means stop, green means go, yellow means tiger)
Steven Artelle works at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. His first collection of poetry, entitled Metropantheon, will be published in the spring of 2014 by Signature Editions. His poetry has appeared in CV2, Vallum and FreeFall, and in publications by Mansfield Press, above/ground press and Bywords. In 2013 AngelHousePress published his chapbook, four hundred rabbits, an excerpt from a work in progress.
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