Apocryphal

David Barrick

 

 

An eclipse isn’t due for another ten months, yet here’s one right now. Gauzy shadow like pantyhose pulled over a face—the schoolyard tinted sepia. A gremlin is tinkering with the firmament, preaches the lunch monitor. Do not look out that window, she says, rapping knuckle after knuckle with a ruler. You’ll be struck blind. Compliant, the student body chews the cud of cold cut sandwiches. On the sly, I tilt my arithmetic tablet, and behind it, fashion a pinhole camera from my milk carton. I point it upwards and out. A colicky pinprick of sun appears between my hands—toy solar flares licking dust mite sprites. No one else can see this diorama, its fragile catechesis.            

 

 

 

David Barrick is author of the poetry collection Nightlight (Palimpsest Press, 2022), as well as the chapbooks Incubation Chamber (Anstruther Press, 2019) and Two Dreams: Stratford and The Copyist (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2022). His poems have been published in The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, EVENT, and other literary journals. He lives and teaches in London, Ontario, where is Managing Director of Antler River Poetry (formerly Poetry London).