Weather Report by John F. Buckley

Art: A Slander of Eyes - This Is Not Broken by Brett Stout

WEATHER REPORT

Life in a fogbank isn’t so wrong.

Picture stray fingerlike tendrils

caressing the wisps of your hair,

weaving the nest of a possible damp,

gentle bird. Life in the gray and

unfocused, rendered vague shades

of art-school cinematography,

leaves every edge soft, unfamiliar

with snipping stark forms in

the atmosphere. Our shapes

in mid-distance could nearly

be one, floating victorious, almost-

felt overlap. We can steer clear of

the sodium bolt of the lighthouse,

that same sudden beam that

it’s always been, poised like a spear

above dark, sodden flanks, like

an answer. Can I get an “Amen”?

Please don’t ask while the usual clouds

make lovely soufflés in the interim.

We are the nestling spoons dreaming

of plumbing the ramekins. Each soul

moist motes drifting, smiling bedraggled

in one vast scene without edges, no

need for simplicity when one can squint

across shifting expanses, spot a familiar

tangle of vectors and faces. Imagine

playing Twister to the lifespan

of unstirred creamer in coffee,

the Brownian wafting: you’d have to

become a contortionist. Better to be

the silhouette, the flicker of hope

in a land without flatlines. Better

to raise a cup within welling fog

and half-recalled fulminant echoes,

not quite yet a bright crack in the dark.

About the author:

John F. Buckley lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His publications include various poems, two chapbooks, the collection Sky Sandwiches, and with Martin Ott, Poets’ Guide to America and Yankee Broadcast Network. His website is http://johnfbuckley.net. He’s the fiction editor for the journal Third Wednesday.

In the artist’s words:

Brett Stout is a 40-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and paramedic. He creates mostly controversial work usually while breathing toxic paint fumes from a small cramped apartment known as “The Nerd Lab” in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. His work has appeared in a vast range of diverse media, from international indie zines like Litro Magazine UK to Brown University. He is tired of talking about himself at this point and prefers that his artwork speak for itself..

Weather Report by John F. Buckley

WEATHER REPORT

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