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issue 3: HEATWAVE

measuring

MITCHELL NOBIS
And when the charts started coming out, 
we saw that it had already been warming 
our whole lives. The good old days &
how things used to be had already always 
been abnormal. My people had already always 
been abnormal. The smokestacks’d already
done their deed: their garrote to the neck of
mammalia, their Molotov Cocktail to amphibia. 
We raise kids in lifeless yards of Scotts and 
Pantone 7741. Some of us already watched the
frogs, and knew. Some of us already watched the 
flocks grow small, and knew.
And when the charts started coming out, the graphics 
showing red & redder, we chanted degrees to the skies:
a bedtime prayer, a request for absolution, 
a plea for benediction. We were
  begging for 
  a bandage to 
  put on a knee scraped
  from falling while 
  trying to get a better  
  view of a praying mantis 
  when we were eight 
  because somehow we
  knew we needed to study its
  form, its penitent pose,
  because somehow we
  knew we needed an extra 
  Amen for every factory shift, 
  no rosaries enough
  to make up for the Styx 
  forming with a
  drip from 
  a degree here, 
  a degree there
  until the world 
  is a river.
    We cleaned scraped knees with water that flowed without ever touching plastic, 
    oh the water 
    that had never dreamed 
    of plastic.

Mitchell Nobis lives in Metro Detroit with his family and dog. His poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, 433, Dunes Review, and others, and is forthcoming in Porcupine Literary. He hosts KickstART Farmington’s reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis or mitchnobis.com.
perhappened mag
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header photo: jo van de kerkhove (unsplash)
issue 4: MIXTAPE    next issue →

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