NO NEWS TODAY
No factories burn. No jets crash. No natural disasters of epic proportions. A man’s pockets are not filling with silver fish, and, above, there are no waves, hardly even a ripple. A woman once again does not remember to call the boiler repairman, who isn’t chewing on a toothpick beneath a bare lightbulb. He does not hum the tune of a song from Les Miz or stop as soon as he realizes he is doing it. His name is not Robert. No one is watching. The playground no one uses, rising from the trash-strewn weeds and gravel behind Mickey Tires & Auto Parts, is not a prehistoric mastodon skeleton, where a lone swing is not creaking your name or anyone else’s. There are no runaways in the gazebo, and one of them, a debonair redhead who, at fifteen, can pass himself off as early twenties, did not just whisper something into the ear of another — a jittery, baby-faced girl, completely bald under the oversized wool beanie she never takes off — causing her to let out a quick, astonished laugh.
Danielle Blau's poems, short stories, articles, and interviews have appeared and are forthcoming in The New Yorker Book Bench blog, The Atlantic online, Black Clock, Brown Literary Review, Perigee: Publication for the Arts, Minetta Review, The L Magazine, and multiple issues of Unsaid, among other publications. Blau is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU's Creative Writing Program. She currently lives in Ridgewood, Queens.
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