dates faded on cans stacked neatly in clean

cupboards, on bags     of consumables unfit for

human consumption,               expired prescriptions,

restrictions,     glossy magazine

subscriptions that

no one reads    anymore because

printed matter             lost its luster

to the temporary tattoos on

the spider’s web filled with encrypted

logins where

no one bothers to log out.

expired human form, repleted,

deleted,            expleted

on interfaces,                           faces unrecognized by soft

ware, word piled,

collapsed content,       reading on burning bridges,

unsellable intent,

profitable stakes of own

insignificance,

sloped abyss,   battering

meaning like a punching bag, spitting its

disgruntled discontent             on the floor, tousled,

chipped, avoided         sedges of the afterlife,

melted cages made of

rare metal, where we try to

entrap the void            stolen from our nest,

padlocked with a combination

no one remembers – and it was zero,

forgotten zeros, zefiro, sifr,                the hero of nothing,

heaving heavily,          smoking its last cigarette

before

it flicks it into our       ribcage

where death greets us naked, having donned only    

its false teeth.
 

Donia G. Mounsef grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. She is a Canadian-Lebanese poet, playwright, and dramaturge. She splits her time on either side of the Canadian Shield, between Toronto and Edmonton where she teaches theater and poetry at the University of Alberta. She is the author of a poetry collection: Plimsoll Lines (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2018), and a chapbook: Slant of Arils (Damaged Goods Press, 2015), reviewed in Fruita Pulp.