No news today - Guest Post - Angela Stubbs

Dear N~

There’s no news today. I’m telling you now for fear you might not read this ‘til later. I’d be none the wiser to missing declarations that come with conducting roll call. The northwest is predictably quiet, sitting on her hands, unable to choose x’s over why but this is nothing new. No silent victories to report. Did you know a plastic blue tarp can prevent use of pots and pans at the highest heights? This is not news but useful information if you feel damp on the inside. I could give you my ideas on a myriad of topics if you prefer painful eagerness to that of a clinical breakthrough.

I have an idea; let’s make our own news by breaking rules with two-sided conversation.

Quid Pro Quo, but you go first.

I’m taking you to the place where Robert named you ‘Dakini’ and you ate plantains

you know how to

sew it

all

up

because thimble and thread need no running shtick.

Maybe there we discuss our collective knowledge of Pakistani writers, bad dates and what happens sometimes to those who don’t know the first thing about field-speak. Pencil me in. Hold the hold.

I feel like we could have our own headlines: BookeyJane Breaks Through Armor, Physician Heals Thy Self!

You think I’m kidding but it’s true.

No strange accounts of the everyday will take place so

shoes stay off.

However, I’m whispering the secret news if you can hear through the static.

You must walk 1000 steps to the left when you go outside.

There are directions on what comes next so you don’t need a ticker, just wait and see if you overhear over here.

The best performances are given via satellite on preset channels but yours is via invitation only.

Will you won’t respond so new news can be known in a world where various hats wait to be worn.

You’re up in ten with some kind of wonderful. Please be sure to wear the fuzzy. The girl in the other room will listen, glass to wall for your words, straining to hear you. Thirty years will speed right past the trachea, between two lungs, thus accelerating the pace with which you produce groundbreaking news, should you choose to exhale, allowing a multitude of outcomes, all in your favor.



No one is taking notes, don’t worry. The news is just news when it exists but it doesn’t and that’s what it means to trust red.



Angela Stubbs is a writer whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Puerto del Sol, DIAGRAM, Marco Polo Quarterly, Elimae, The Collagist, The Rumpus, Astrophil Press, Bookslut and others. She has a column at The Nervous Breakdown and is an MFA Writing and Poetics candidate at Naropa University.