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The Forest

by
April 2022, no. 441

The Forest

by
April 2022, no. 441

There could be someone, there, walking through a forest – upright or
slightly bending – gathering, not berries, or fallen nuts, or mushrooms,
but thoughts; there could be thoughts like whining insects that drill down
through the air to this someone, who is not ‘someone’ to insects, but
at most, might be a chemical, electrical or visual site; there could be someone

over there, making noises in a forest, shaking off the always-fleeing
thought of fleeing from the always-being of their own country; in their
head, packing up the child, the dog, the goat, the –

can you hear it now, the whining, no, not an insect really, but if real can
be a metal thing, airborne, or a steel box, grunting and churning through
the mud, ‘really’ must be how the thing advances calmly through a forest,
seeing – if a thing can see – other objects running off; they call them
‘signals’, as the thing does –

the thing detecting signals seems calm but it is metal – a signal’s walking
by again, restless, through the forest, moving slowly, making sounds to
itself and not – as would be less unusual – to another signal, but as if in
a loop, making sense of itself – in its system, the fleeting-but-recurring
thought of fleeing, in a loop – and there is one, hanging from a tree –

From the New Issue

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