We queue to manage the balances of what we’re owed
to what we owe, orderly as souls in private panic before the Judgment,
shuffling our documents as though judgment weren't already written
in the Cloud. From the shop adjacent wafts the incense
of coffee and the vulgar muffins, overstuffed as geese
with funnels down their throats, truly the muffins of a culture on the brink
of steep decline. To be no longer working means differently to you
and me,
to those of us who will not walk, as in the promotional literature,
Autumn Day
Karen Solie
Karen Solie’s most recent book of poetry, The Caiplie Caves, was published this spring in Canada, the US, and the UK. She lives in Toronto.