No news today - Guest Post - Joshua Furst

We got the news, when it came at all, weeks after it had occurred, and—though by then, it was meaningless, useless, a fading dream, to the rest of the world—we read it, when it arrived, like it still mattered. The outrageous claims of political hucksters, the baroque tales of intrigue and violence in the cities, announcements of bills passes or stalled in the Senate, of inventions and slaughters and weddings and sporting events, all so crucial, so bloated with change-making implications, we’d read all about these goings on, nodding, stroking our chins, exclaiming, “Well, who woulda thunk that could ever be?,” pondering how the news would affect our lives, or if it already had, and if so, how, when?

We’d mosey out to the porch and look across the fields—the fresh cut alfalfa, the stream, the old oak tree—all the same old same old we knew so well. That stray tabby had given birth to a new litter; they were hobbling around now, their eyes still half glued shut. We’d feel just the same as we had the day before, and the day before that, and last year and so on. But different too, a little less sure of whether to believe the story of the land sloping out before us or those tales that had floated in from the capital, a bit more resentful about being told, so long after the fact, what was real and what wasn’t. Like we didn’t have eyes. Like we couldn’t see for ourselves.

Storms were brewing in the sky, tornado season was on its way again.

Joshua Furst is the author of The Sabotage Cafe and Short People. His work has been published in the Chicago Tribune, Conjunctions, the New York Tyrant and Esquire, among other periodicals.