By Alex Rettie
I used to know a guy called Ivan Truch.
Everyone called him Consequential I.
I asked him this one time, I say to him
“Why do they call you Consequential I?”
And he’s all, “Well, because my name’s Ivan.”
So I say, “Sure, but why Consequential?”
Ivan takes out his left eye – it was glass –
and holds it up to me, and says “Just look.”
I do, and damn if I don’t see a light
in it, blinking red and green and yellow,
and a little woman made of silver
balls, rocking this baby who stares at me
and raises his small fist, which starts to bleed.
“Right,” I say. “Eye. But why Consequential?”
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Alex Rettie writes from the top floor of a rented house in Calgary, Alberta. Alex's poems have appeared in journals in Canada, the US, and the UK, including Raceme, the lickety-split, Queer Toronto, Passengers Journal, Sinking City, and SoFloPoJ.
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