Hardening Off Process

Step 1: Watch
your forebear paint his portrait

in the living
room

eyes peek-a-booed by palms as
cumuli shroud
his 10 wan digits

Step 2: Listen
with respect to his favourite tape

he’ll ask the travel agent Wednesday
if Angelico can join him

when “This corpse will finally get to see
the Golden Gate Bridge—”

Step 3: Notice
how his hands shake
“Burgers ‘n’ shakes for everyone!”
when you thought you’d finally convinced him of the benefits of vegetarianism

Step 4: Ignore
as he swings a brief case in the trunk

embarks on the driver’s seat as
Mom alights beside

You’re too busy making tea
from two-hundred gunpowder worms to—

Step 5: Collapse
because he left without a hug

cant the handset to your sister
screech out the door as she explains:

“10-digit dialing
makes contacting the dead
even more difficult in dreams.”

Step 6: Start
—forgot to bring the plants inside.

~ Sarah-Jean Krahn

Sarah-Jean Krahn holds an MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University. Her writing has been published by the Canadian experimental journal dead (g)end(er) and is forthcoming in the second anthology of experimental press great weather for MEDIA and the academic journal Feminist Studies. Sarah-Jean is the co-editor of the creative writing journal S/tick.

Artwork: Destruction at its finest, by Russell Barnes