Chris Hutchinson
Winter 2025 | Poetry
from The Book of Future Happiness
Like me, this rural gas station lights up the night.
By day, I’m beside myself, a swan’s black reflection.
You slam the door behind the lake and absquatulate.
My diction’s sick, but in a sick way.
Is this a holographic grid or is this ‘real life’?
You’re all yo-yo, teeter-totter, rise ‘n’ fall.
I’m all periodicity, all this ‘n’ that millennium —
the kind of guy who looks up slang on ChatGPT.
(This town’s mid. It’s giving cottage-core vibes.)
When I get thirsty, I’ll (allegedly) hop on any old camper van bus.
Listen, what’s freakish in me needs to be greenlit, stat!
What (I think) I’m saying is: I can almost hear
the distant ocean sound of pages being torn
from The Book of Future Happiness.
Chris Hutchinson is a Canadian poet and the author of five poetry collections, as well as the auto-fictive verse novel Jonas in Frames. His latest collection, Lost Signal, is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in spring 2025. Find him here: chris-hutchinson.com