ISSUE 87 | JUN 2018

OLD AGE

Ainsley Morse, Irina Shostakovskaya

Untitled (2013)

Their toys were all shared: the sand is scattered with / Tanks, airplanes, rockets. Rust on the fuselages, / Their guns are turned to the side. They won’t fire. // In the blue-grey grass a stray is gnawing on a para- / Trooper. He is not alive. He’s the only one left

Jeff Rehnlund

Chronotransmissions

Daphne Athas stands in her yard with her mail and looks at me with her good eye. She wants to know what it means when the papers write that the stolen emails weren’t encrypted. The other eye is liquid-opaque and much larger. Among friends, we secretly refer to her as the Crone because she’s the wisest and oldest woman we’ve met.

Kit Eginton

A Dull, Distinct Light

The walls were the color of liver and the space was full of old humans just parked at odd angles in various conveyances – some in wheelchairs, and some on half-reclining stretchers. It was a tiny woman lying on one of those stretcher things, wrapped up in cheap blankets and oxygen tubing, who grabbed my hand and asked me where she was, which I told her. She didn’t let go.