Originally from Owen Sound, Ontario, David Hull now lives and writes in Toronto on unceded Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Wendat lands. His work has appeared in a number of journals and magazines, including The Walrus, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Canadian Literature, PRISM, The New Quarterly, and On Spec. His novella The Man Who Remembered the Moon was released as an Amazon Kindle Single and, later, in print by Dumagrad Books (2015).
“‘Algol’ was conceived on the steps of a fish market in Toronto’s Kensington Market, while listening to a punk band practice across the street, reading about Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1545 – 1554), and looking up to realize the star Algol was in view—only to discover I was being watched from a window the whole time.”
We assume there is someone in a black room
although from here only the cigarette is certain:
glowing, fading, glowing, fading
in the window above the storefront.
We speak quietly, this evening, of the usual things:
the nighthawk’s triplets, our indiscretions, the vastness
of our anger; and the disappearance two weeks ago
of Perseus.
Maybe there is no black room.
Perhaps just a wall, a rectangular hole, and through it
only the night.
Then fingertips flick in the window.
Out fall a bloody head and a blinking red star
smack on the pavement in front of us.
