From Conjugation. Published by BookThug in 2016. Phil Hall is a teacher and an award-winning author of over a dozen books. He lives near Perth, Ontario. Oh I missed Fountain Pen Day! ~ For a while a couple years ago I was working on a series of poems about imaginary Special Days somewhat in imitation of Calvino’s Invisible Cities my favourite was Day Day all of the festivities for this one were transparencies they fit right over the day & were unseen ~ Also this line no one remembered it was Balcony Day seems so sad that line to me even now ~ Once a year there was a day by which anything you wanted to keep had to be taken off your balcony then on that day Balcony Day whatever items were still left out there disappeared all of the balconies up all of the high-rises in all of the target areas suddenly empty what a feeling of lightness & a readiness for fresh marketing Cashier Co-operatives would send up flares from their roof-decks as if ice has broken in a river enthused the laureates sales soared ~ But if a person were standing on a balcony at midnight come Balcony Day poof gone so balcony as in she committed balcony or he balconied became a common form of suicide annual group suicide ~ It was good to clear away the dead-profit junk every 12 months but how could the State stop these suicides by its consumers? so all advertising for Balcony Day was suppressed & each year Clearing Day as it was now called in internal reports was scheduled for a different undisclosed day ~ That helped but still there were many who sick of shopping stood on balconies every night at the tick of midnight hoping today was the day
Festivities
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