2600 hertz
The twelve things I know about my condition I learned in the waiting room. This is not the arbitration you called. Bring me solution-based problems. The tipping point is either price or marketing but not both, according — Hyperspace is a necessary device in space opera. To get from A to . Or: ships that house a population that will reproduce for generations. Or: don’t read that stuff. Improve yourself, banish genre from all inventory. I feel abysmal. I could use a holiday. I could use the fuck out of a holiday. What they don’t tell you about middle age is that the sun gets brighter, everything’s more vivid. The walls are pulsing like they’re breathing. Nothing is safer than scuba diving. If you tell me in confidence I will blame it on piracy.
Lamplighter variance (2)
more nuanced / altered but you’re / between friends
among / copies of / the weather
hooked up / with jet setters / a fight
boss a / plan to transform / the readers
you’re / stolen again by / the militants
everyone’s changed / you’re wearing / love
there’s a / rule nobody’s / human
when / you’re ambushed / you’ll be saved
by the memory/ of wrestlers’ cigars / and hair
you hitchhiked / out of trouble / when life
spiralled / and you touched his / skin
nobody knows / the pain of / being unable but
everyone / embraced that pain / back then
Lamplighter variance (3)
some have it / some don’t like / poker tells
the eyes the twitch / it’s a question of / empathy
nerves are makers / diminutive / machines
I’m dying in slow / motion and / half-clothed
it’s the twist / and the barely / assenting
pirouette / over the mythology / the fan service
the detective / and / his fur
there’s an owl / and a magician / who can’t remember
if you smoke / but she does / as you’re hunting
down a reference in / your raincoat / the numinous
the snake bite / the trademark twins / estranged
his voice / turned tricks to make / things easier
they say / it’s all one take / but there’s a cut
A.D. Harper‘s poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, The Manchester Review, and The Interpreter’s House, among others. He tweets @harpertext.
