Grimes - "Oblivion". She 1 stares into the stars, night after night, with grim concentration, and nothing changes. It is more than frustrating - it is incendiary, infuriating. She is gifted, witchy, hexed. She is more than these pinpricks. She is the dreaming changer. Her movements leave trails of light. [Visions is due Jan 31 / buy other things]

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - "We Are Unhappy". She 2 needed new rain boots, so she took the bus to the hardware store. It was so cold that day. Even the asphalt seemed tensed, seized-up. She walked in silence. Tiny pinwheeling white specks, not snow, maybe dust, maybe ash, maybe mid-autumn pollen. At the entrance, the doors opened without touching. Wide bright aisles. Copper pipes, pine planks, rows of sturdy shovels. She, with the end of a smile. A lie of an end of a smile. She found the boots. She took a pair in her size. She sat on a bench with the boots before her and knew she wouldn't try them on, boots in a hardware store. They'd be fine. Why bother. She looked up to where a man was cutting a key, this careful drilling sound. He was patient with the item and the tool. And she was so weary. She had thought once that by going wearily into life, everything would eventually become okay, like an ice-cube melting into water. Like resting your head on a pillow. But now her branches had been bare for so long, and it was so cold outside. And when the man was finished with the key he would give it to someone to buy. [buy]

(image by Charles Allan Gilbert)