Near Miss

By Laura Matwichuk

Near Miss considers the relationship between close calls and the tenuous conditions of contemporary life. From actual cataclysms such as meteor collisions and volcanic eruptions to everyday failures and accidents, these inventive poems collide with the perpetual unease created by life's unpredictability while contemplating mortality, fragility, gratitude and hopefulness.

When the Emergency Broadcast System proclaims

this is only a test, you leave the TV on

because you've gotten used to the sound.

You keep waiting for the heat to come on,

for the regular broadcast to resume,

for a new sensation to quicken inside you

like the sight of that fleet of ghost planes

lifted from the desert, reanimated,

hovering over your house as if everything is fine.

--"Decommissioned Planes"

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0889713537
• ISBN13: 9780889713536
• Release Date: September 2019
• Publisher: Nightwood Editions
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.6" x 8.0"