issue 1: New Beginnings
Construction is everywhere
Cid V Brunet
Montreal, summer, 2022
beep
beep
beep I wake up believing
I’m moving backwards.
Gut-punched by the dump truck piling gravel
on my doorstep, tailgate
a guillotine. Then my walls begin to vibrate
from the renoviction above where a belt-sander
diligently erases evidence
of a small family.
Did you know the difference between grasshoppers
and a swarm of locusts is a frame of mind?
I take my dog on a walk to the fence
that separates us from what used to be
a parc. I google the difference
between panic and an anxiety
attack while a backhoe squeals
crushes scrapes away
the thinnest veil of green
so my dog has to piss
on concrete. I could weep
from the guilt of making her live
here, where calm gets devoured. I need a new life
while this one is under destruction. Stacked tankers
obstruct the sky where there used to be the forested
Terrain Vague—wasteland, where once I saw an owl.
I am a dust mote in a combustion engine. Even at night
long-legged excavators line the flayed streets, hungry.
How Can You Be Sad When There Are Advertisements in Space?
Cid V Brunet
A rocket was launched in 2018 called Humanity Star. Meant to be a
Bright symbol and reminder of our fragile home on earth. Made of
Carbon fiber, weighing 10.5 kg, the geodesic sphere looked like a
Disco ball. Astronomers hated its visible flares. I didn’t have to see
it to hate it.
Eiffel Tower centennial celebrations proposed a Ring of Light,
a launch of 100 re-
Flectors to catch 10 minutes of sunlight. A spectacular non-event.
Meanwhile,
Golf balls were hit off the ISS porch.
Hydrogen and helium are the lightest elements, produced
during the Big Bang.
Iodine was formed through an r-process—it’s astrophysics—
don’t worry about it.
Just imagine, while you were thinking about
Killing yourself
Laying down and never seeing the
Moon
No more, the
Oxygen in your lungs was created inside a star. Did you know
Pizza Hut delivered a 6-inch salami to the space station? Or that
Pepsi paid 5 M for a
Quick shot of their soda floating in space? The next time
you’re sad
Remember the Russian Znamya project. A 20-meter wide
Solar mirror that produced a 5 km bright spot, luminosity
equivalent
To a full moon.
Undeniably pretty cool eh? But not an ad like strapping a Tesla
onto a SpaceX rocket.
Very good Elon, we were all verrrry impressed. Companies like
Worldview enterprises claim they will open commercial Spaceports
in 2024 while Space-
X is working on a launch vehicle that could carry humans
to Mars. How can
You still be sad when you learn about the
Zinger-1 mission? Where KFC lifted a Zinger to space
in a high-altitude balloon.
Cid V Brunet is an emerging author who published their debut memoir, This Is My Real Name in 2021. Cid writes socially and politically engaged characters for a broad and accessible readership. Recently they’ve been working on a masters of creative writing with UBC while living and writing in Montreal/Tiohtiá:ke.