There’s No Room In This Bed For You, Shinji Ikari

I’m the West Wind on a still day.

He Doesnt Like You (I Dont Like You Either)

I’m the West Wind on a still day.
I’m Sonic the Hedgehog
when he doesn’t want to go fast.
I’m the last Fruit Loop in the box, or else
I’m the first one in the bowl. I don’t know
how to tell the left side of my face
from the right side of history,
but I can tell you this: I am still
sorry about the way things began
even if the end was idyllic.
Which is a long way of saying:
I may not be the droid you’re looking for
but I’m the droid you found.




There’s No Room In This Bed For You, Shinji Ikari

for Katherine


Tomorrow, let the LCL fall like snow.
Tell the angels to take the day off
and let’s hit the streets of Tokyo-3.
We’ll exit-plug ourselves from trauma
and into a future. We’ll cover our mouths
and tell each other secrets so boring
none of us can even hear them.
We’ll sing karaoke songs, but only
the bridges. We will hold hands
with Kaji all day long.

But tonight, Asuka is snoring, Pen Pen
is snoring—everyone is ready to die.
But you, by which I mean me ... no.
There’s no room in this bed for you,
Shinji Ikari. Which is probably a metaphor
for something, whose meaning is
your problem now.

About the author

John Elizabeth Stintzi is a writer, cartoonist, and editor who grew up on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. Their work has been awarded the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, and the Sator New Works Award, and has been shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and the Raymond Souster Award. JES is the author of the novels My Volcano and Vanishing Monuments, as well as the poetry collection Junebat and the forthcoming poetry chapbook Flamingos in the Greenhouse. They are currently at work on their first graphic novel: Automaton Deactivation Bureau.