Thanks, Poets!

Thanks everyone, for creating another interesting, beautiful month of poetry!

And thanks for the feedback on my poems - I look forward to going back and digging into several of them.

Best,
Polly

Under Construction

After the wear and tear of the years
I thought I had to start from scratch
bulldoze, leave nothing from before,
rebuild brick by brick

But when those first
destructive urges passed,
I looked around, checked
found the structure still sound
the skeleton strong enough
to hold for a few more decades

So I'm hanging a sign over
my bed, my head:
Under Construction

I'll hate the dust, the ladders
the loud men cracking jokes
spilling coffee
drilling holes
dropping dirty cigarette
butts to the floor

But I know in the end
there will be fresh paint
shiny new fixtures
higher ceilings
a certain elegance,
spaciousness, modernity
a sense of class
that will make the whole
project worth while

Names for my unlikely daughter

Contumelia - from Latin for outrage, insult.
She springs screaming from my equally yowling netherlands

Apologia - formal defense, justification,
especially of one's opinions, position, or actions.
Greek for "story"
Isn't this what children are for?
Our final defense and justification to the world,
we did it for the kids?
If not that, then at least a new story can be told.

Obvia - prevent, anticipate, make unnecessary
From Latin ob viam, "in the way"
Have I made her unnecessary,
or will she prove me wrong,
asking me to anticipate her instead?

Refragaria - from Latin
"to oppose, to withstand, to thwart."
Which is what I would want her to do,
even to me, especially to me
It is her destiny, after all.

Trise - to pull, to hoist, a pulley
She climbs, I hoist, she pulls,
we become a machine that works together.
or perhaps Trice - an instant; a moment
To remind us both,
that's all we get together in this world.

Apostasia - desertion from one's faith or principles
Greek "standing away from, revolt"
To have her, I will need to depart the church of childfree,
but I would teach her to revolt, to stand on her own two legs,
three if she's got 'em.

Prolix - unnecessarily long; wordy.
Latin "pour forth"
She will flow from me
and words of all kinds will flow from us both
as we figure out what we want from each other
and she experiments with how to get it.

Tervagant - boisterous, brawling, turbulent person
A Muslim diety portrayed in medieval morality plays
eventually referring only to women.
A small tornado to wrestle with
for a few decades,
longer if she'll have me.

My last

...post. And you'll be surprised to see it really has nothing to do with Yves, although I was trying--the poem just didn't conform. It's been a pleasure writing/working with everyone again in MayDay--I've found the experience fantastic. I hope people share the good news on any excitement involving the poetry. Thank you for your feedback/thoughts on my poems and good luck to everyone in everything.




SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD

1.

It’s a misread, an accident
that should have read “will”

the mistake of an aging single
aunt, a spinster they wrongly used

to say, as she speaks her living
into the tape recorder found

at a flea market for a dollar.
She will eventually hire someone

to revive her wishes, a friend’s
daughter’s boyfriend, the wanna-be

director, to film what she is unable
to figure out, her testament

to the process knowing full well
this isn’t the academy awards

nor is it high art (perhaps
in some French foreign

abstract way), but she wears
her store-bought blue

while posing on satin sheets
the bed a staleness

of occasion tightly bound
by the bone-bumped wrist

that grazes the pillow
of what she wills—

which is nothing
to the unseen, always ungrateful

family, and everything
to her neighbour.




2.

The neighbour knows
nothing about the aunt

except the laundry aired
daily on the rusted metal tree

the inside out hanging in long
underwear, the black gartered

slip, finely patterned cotton
dresses tracking days beside

pale silk stockings unsnagged
by any rough-palmed hand—

and rows of bras hold
only each other, silently sway

whipped by wind’s weekly
worry and high-waisted

hopes pinned in the past’s
determination to endure.



3.

Sometimes we all get the wrong
idea. A cloud that curls

in front of our eyes, the sold sign
hammered in before the sale. The white

wake widening before we notice
what we leave behind. And mis-

understanding the aunt asks, what will
save us?

twelve

You were my time piece,
one hand on my shoulder, the other
rooting around
in my shirt. Even half asleep
your third eye was always on the clock.
A year in, you're still a stickler:
just enough time to shower, just enough
to eat so I can feed
you again: Tick
tock, mummy. Tick tock.

eleven

A year in

They say Winnipeg only has two seasons:
winter and construction. They say
you can only count on death and taxes
except I sum-totaled the toes
curled in passive recognition
around my sun-tanned fingers
too many times
to count.

But that’s old news. A year in, the fusty raisin
rattle from the change table drawer
is the only figment
of the stretch between birth
and afterbirth. You no longer upholster
my middle-of-the-night with sharp
screams, preferring to cut teeth
on the flesh of my day-to-day
my twilight
my early evening longing
for unencumbered certainty.

They said to wake you if you slept
through the night. They said
you shouldn’t sleep in our bed. They said
you would never get to sleep
if we babied you
but today your face was luscious
in sleep but today when you waited
for the man that curled
around you, careful comma,
before lurching across the room
I shed all
my expectations.

Roche Lake: Fly Fishing

Up late with a bottle, early out on the lake. Loon call
rippling into quiet. Fish jump beside the boat, slap clean
their scales; my brother and I smudged with dirt
and campsmoke watch chronomids rise from the lake bed,
discard their former shell, and woozy, hatch. They swarm
the boat with sound. It’s my first time out—
novelty shines up the rods, the fly box. Supper art
at $4 a pop, a knock-off some sucker will swallow,
thinking it’s real-life.

But the fish are smarter than we think.
Nothing’s biting so we switch to shrimp,
set the bobber at twelve feet after consulting the fish finder,
$150 convenience that replaces what our eyes can see,
our hands measure—watching for colour changes
or dropping a pair of needle nose pliers on fishing line
to garner the depth.

All day out in the boat, filling up the hours.
Nothing to distract us, conversation idles. We change it up,
try a new location, try trolling, try casting.
When to give up, when to try again?
I can’t get into the Zen of it. I strong-arm the rod,
bend my wrist when I’m supposed to keep it straight,
hook myself, hook my brother’s line. Chaplin-style slapstick.
I catch two things all day: a steady pull as my hook
snags lake bottom, a big one I thought
as my line wrapped around the propeller.

Back at camp, we listen for tips: green chronomids,
cinnamon shrimp. How’s the fishing, we ask
then wish we hadn’t. Their ten to our zero
flares even the beginner’s ego.
It’d be easier with worms, spoons,
but skill is what we’re aiming for.
Wanting success, a four pound trout to throw on the grill,
we head back out. Anchor by the reeds.
Cast and cast and cast our intentions.
I can think of nothing worthy to offer
in exchange for it’s one life
and so catch nothing.


------
I've been sitting on this all week trying to make it hatch. Still wrestling with the themes, but thought I'd share it. Sorry I haven't been commenting much. I have been reading and enjoying the poems though.

Last Friday in May

A Leap into the Void

It’s only that our lives
are busy, our hands
plunged in painted

portraits, portions
portioned by
sky’s middle, parallel

pasts, our fingers full
in fact so much so
that we forget

to be thankful for
such finely
featured faces.

Copies

He takes them
but doesn't believe her

She could have taken them anytime
to that shop down the street
that sells nuts and bolts
and copies keys

She could have a set stowed away
in these bags she's taking
held together by a piece of yarn
or a garbage bag tie
or even slipped onto that new ring
of keys she carries around

She could come back one night
jump on a bus or drive back the car
unlock the door while he's sleeping
and slip in beside him
as if she never left

Yves Eyes

Yesterday night, Wednesday, we went into an abstract café… the abstractionists were there. They are easy to recognize because they give off an atmosphere of abstract painting, plus you see their paintings in their eyes. Maybe I’m delirious, but I have the impression I see things like that. In any event, we sat down with them. Then we began speaking of the book Yves Peintures. Later, I went to get it from the car and I laid it down on the table. At the very first few pages the abstractionists’ eyes began to change. Their eyes lit up and in the depths, pure, beautiful single colors appeared.

Paris newspaper, dated January 13, 1955






What did I know? At the time
I was certain that Yves eyes

were brown, not earth’s honeyed hue
exposed by wind, or the chocolate

of cocoa, or blurred like weakened
coffee, but a tender doubled tint—

morning’s shady past slowly
edged in dew’s damp linens,

the shyness of water’s soft fall,
light’s luminal glance

as day’s electricity turned first
on then off. Isn’t absence

what is most real? Someone
dreams a beginning, the impossible

burst of orange— one framed
wooden window. The sky

beyond is not simply scarred by birds,
or cumbersome clouds

seam-ripped by motorized machines
but faked by fingers that study

the blue. And blue,
someone says, is the great trick—

a kind of universal masturbation,
where the hand is always eager

to grasp what it sees.

ten

The city at night
is a tinkling bracelet
of sirens

Long Weekend

Cars double-park on every block
We drag our bags down the steps
throw them in trunks, drive off laughing

We've packed our hopes for the summer
into this long weekend

We bring shorts to run around in
and a suit for water so inviting
we have to dive in
even though it still harbours
strong memories of ice

We take care to bring fleece
just in case the nights
are not quite as warm
as we've dreamed of
all winter long


Here are two poems from the last few days at the Lake - a couple more tomorrow...

Deaths of Trees

Some trees rot at the roots
fungus grows deep down among
their twenty toes
with nothing to stand on
they topple over

Other trees suffer the indignity
of having their skin scraped bare
by humans, boars, elephant tusks
too exposed to the world
they die of embarrassment

Some are hit by lightening
without warning in the night
a flash of pain slashed in two
smoldering black cauterized agony
they are too traumatized to live

Others see the fire coming
from miles away, watch
their sisters extinguish,
immobilized mesmerized
they are consumed

In some parts, a genocide takes
out a mountainside in a summer
men with their machines,
merciless blades slice unstoppable,
they are sent up the river

But this grandma tree
decades of holes sheltering
birds and small furry creatures,
doesn't fight off the scaly moss
bent and warped from
years of wind-battle
still her sparse branches
put out green leaves
each spring

so long

uncertain


from the end of the driveway
we watch a slow shooting star
just beyond the stretch
of our fingers, until it becomes
the low glide of a gull, tiny spark
in an uncertain night



Hey all,
This will be my last poem for a while; I'm taking a week of holidays (actual away holidays, not a just a may day holiday). Happy long weekends to one and all!

k.

Garage Sale

for J


I love her hunched over coffee, pen in hand.
Up at eight to circle ads, she plots our route
while I’m still in bed. Saturday morning
spent in musty garages eying stranger’s
stickered history: hockey skates worn
half a season $10, all manner of racquets $2,
board games with missing pieces
and Robert Ludlum novels 25 cents. Junk, mostly,
but we both know treasure when we find it:
old tins, apple boxes at bargain prices.
She knows there’s a story in every object
and takes the time to ask. That was my grandfather’s axe.
She has the patience I lack, sees the potential
in everything. A rusted ten speed
for five bucks, that she’ll sand and repaint.
I love her hunched over the spokes
polishing with a toothbrush.

The Fundamentalist

Decides today he doesn’t want to be
a painter, raises his salon-blackened brows

to the ceiling’s lumbered frame,
thickens his canvas with water,

while judo-trained knees muscle-
crunch complaints about the foot’s

certain speed when he rushes to draw
a torch from the closet

filled with tobacco tucked in tins—
(in 365 days he smokes

so much that the lip-
dropped ash is enough

to build an Eiffel Tower,
or two). He understands fire

makes the body suffer. The flame
aimed at the morning’s

passing attempt of work,
seared hours singed simply

by the tense tilting
hand. And the sun’s surface

is not nearly as warm as a painter’s
forehead when he’s thinking.

speechless


you didn’t know what to say
that impossible winter –
cold hardening lungs and limbs,
steering columns and shoe soles,
but hardly registering with me except
that some days it was the only thing
i could think to tell my dad
as i balanced on the lip of the visitor’s chair
another cold one out there
and stole warmth from his hands,
crackers from his dinner tray

you chipped ice from our sidewalk,
nudged up the thermostat a degree
and stood each evening
at the living room window
to watch for my frozen breath
unlocking the door just so
i wouldn’t have to
take off my mittens

you turned off every hockey game
to sit on the chesterfield, hoping
with me the phone wouldn’t ring

you made sure the car was plugged in,
alarm set, milk and fruit in the fridge
so there’d be an orange for me
to take as offering, to occupy my dad’s hands
as i poured weak tea into styrofoam cups,
to zest-freshen the hospital room
and fill the minutes’ slow circular shuffling
with wiping fingers on a paper napkin

you packed a sandwich
for my dad that he spoke of – still does –
as if ham and bread were a miracle ,
and gathered just the right type
of newsy, ironic stories particular to men
and this climate – cars and cold misfortune –
that triggered a lift in his eyebrows,
reminiscing and remember-when

you gave me all the heat saved
up in your chest as you waited
with me for sleep, for spring,
for illness to finally thaw
with the season


A couple of questions here, if anyone has a minute... is the order of stanzas/information confusing? Ending too neat 'n tidy? Is it clear that all the "you" parts and "he" parts are happening in different locations?

k.

Junk Drawer

Crammed with rubber bands, sandpaper,
bent nails, loose change—a sanctuary
for the would-be-useful in triplicate.
Allen keys, AAA batteries, candle nubs
for waxing sticky drawers. Advocate
for pro-clutter décor, just open
its stuffed maw and toss in.
Dumping ground for twist ties,
and misfit buttons, a home for all
we’re too lazy to sort,
for thingamabobs and doodads
we can’t bear to throw out.

Stuff

I have come
to get my stuff

A friend suggested
it was too much for me,
I should send someone else.
But where do you hire
a person like that?

No, this is the kind of thing
you have to take care of yourself.
There are too many decisions to be made.

papers: do you keep the notes
from you to him or him to you?
Is it time to throw out the valentines
from the boyfriend now twice-removed?
Who cares the most?

files: who's going to copy
the tax returns, and who
keeps the originals?
Who counts the most?

cds: is it worth fighting
over who really owns the
special edition Miles Davis
even though you're perfectly sure
it was a birthday present for you?
Who listened most?

dvds: who gets Casablanca,
do you split up box sets,
what do you do with
the empty cases?
Who sat and watched the most?

photos: do you keep the ones
where you look good,
or leave those for him?
Who will remember the most,
and who will need reminders?

Traveler's Circle

I found another unpacked case
holding clothes
still smelling like the city

the shoreline
and the woods

receipts from assorted cafes
mark my steps
over concrete paths
littered with foreign paper

the tiled Imagine at the edge
of the park gave up photo op
to flash in my slideshow
when my monitor slows

between lines of words
falling out of my head
like purple bullets

splashes of Peruvian lilies
decorating the circle

a pair of fish inked
alongside Chinese characters
supposedly indicating
Good Money

which I have less of now

but dreams of trains
take me up welded tracks
to places where spring
is still budding

not all spent and over green
like this place
the poppies gone to seed
the lavender already heady
in the afternoon heat

a polished clam shell
glows luminous smooth
with a salty link
to steamed mussels
at sunset

the cedar shingles
of artists homes were gray
as rain sky
trimmed in crayon colors
around the doors and windows

almost the shade of tides
coming and going
under the open windows
were we slept

the dogs jumped in and swam
with more joy than fishes
as cats skulked in deflated seaweed
swatting green bladders

and cormorants dived
between lobster buoys
and gulls spread black wings
against the wind

I never figured out why
it blew so hard after dark
as if the sun’s departure
gave air more space
once light was gone

or why the cat wants
to sleep on the shirt
I’ve thrown on the floor
curled like a seashell
whispering with salt air.

And now for something completely different

...or not. This is a day late, not that I'm losing momentum, but that I haven't felt much like a writer. Like the other long one, I'm sure this isn't ready for other eyes yet, but I'm ready for comments. For those with no Klein experience, it's based on the series of paintings called "Anthropometries". I will hopefully get to some comments on everyone's poetry tomorrow.



Anthropoemetry

1.

He said the routine
is simple as swimming
asked if I knew how
told me I could
breast-stroke in International Klein
Blue’s shallow ocean
where the wave’s edge drifts
in audience-eyed shores
and the moon is usually full
of the sky.


2.

He said touch creates a sense—
a vision. Last night I dreamed
he was coarse-canvas, palms
flattened to my hips, thighs lined
with yes.


3.

He said there is comfort
in performance. Yves Klein—
the ringmaster at a circus
dressed in a dark suit
waves white gloves while he conducts
three women’s bodies and limbs. I stretch
myself onto a painted portion of the floor
skim skin in wetness, the thick
oily crawl, bristles bruising
nipples. And then I think
maybe someone notices
the slight belly-bulge
under my own hands
the smoothness
as they slide up and over
a thick-caged heart’s
impatient sound, the thumping
dull then drowned
by the Monotone Symphony’s
muffled score.

4.

He said the body always
comes clean. Later I am
alone to a steady drip
the empty bathtub
tinged blue. I lean
my chest over the sink,
press my hand to the steam-
fogged mirror and wipe.

nine

Spring is low-down
in the morning she attempted embroidery
with the green horde –
but their long stitches looped
from limb to limb
every last worm taken by the wind
before she could show them
her tight
regular stitches

Her afternoon music lessons
were no better: frogs that overwintered
under a slowly softening log
or a wet clump
don’t leave anything to the imagination
flashed legs and white throats
while they sang
and it turned out
it’s all about the groupies
anyway

Spring wrings her hands
over the pulp
of fallen blossoms
the spent pussywillows
you see just about
everywhere
but what can you do?

those tiny violins

how can you expect a poem
when even your dreams
lack imagination:
overdue library books,
a blurring of words
you can’t identify

when you wake up lost
in the home you own

when it’s raining grey

when days are broken
into units of to do
lonely for checkmarks

when lunch is fifteen minutes
with a dry sandwich
in a dim food court
on a chair molded
for much less
meaty haunches

when you need new shoes
and a few answers
before going any further

when you dust the corners
of your desk drawer
in search of forgotten chocolate

when the mailbox lets you down
with a brassy slap

when perennials no longer respond
to a nudge from your gloved finger,
last year’s garden crumbles
under your breath

when this is the only ink
that sticks

In which I attempt a glosa

My job went suddenly full-time, so I've been neglectful lately. But I've been working on the following slightly dirty poem (apologies to anyone who might not be ok with the blue language, but ach, sometimes you gotta). I've quite obviously fudged the rhyme in the lines that are supposed to rhyme (6, 9, 10 of each stanza, if you've never been foolish enough to try one of these), but I do that a lot, so whatever.

I also want to comment on so much of everyone's recent stuff, and that will happen very soon.


Sight

How nice to register the world in shapes
you might squeeze or eat. Better than words,
plus you can get your hands dirty, like work,
but fun, like playing in the grass at night

from “For Ann, Whose Studio Burnt to the Ground in the Big Futon Factory Fire Across the Freeway from the Coliseum,” August Kleinzahler


The newspaper this morning says that artists have sex
with more people than anyone else—they've done a survey.
It doesn't say quite what they mean by artists, but I get it.
Staying overnight with friends in the city. Purple duvet.
The other guest in that house: a painter with grey eyes,
bony hips, the warm smell of salt on him. He came
to the borrowed bedroom's door and wasn't wrong
to wake me. I let him in knowing already his damp sternum
thrummed for someone else; that he'd soon forget my name.
How nice to register the world in shapes,

like a toddler gumming wooden blocks, how pleasant
to be so intent on remembering things with the eye, the hand,
the tongue, that the rest falls away, all burn-off, dross. Bodies
trump names. We end up in their beds, so many of us—
if the survey's right—to be just once the form desired,
the surface palmed. Great salivating moon-eyed herds
of us, slavish, lunging for that twinge of skin gone hot
beneath the painter's eye. The sculptor's roughened thumb.
Skin a colour to be consumed, consumable and used, like fruit
you might squeeze or eat. Better than words,

their cryptic pictures, for getting what they want and whom
they choose. We're mentioned in the survey, too. I don't buy it.
No one ever bedded me because of the word poet. We're
a lonely lot—our drunken nights end with the air grown still
and fingers wanting not flesh but the clean touch of paper and pen.
My last painter was a redhead with a cock so thick it hurt
and a Nordic beard he blushed under when I told him
it was gorgeous. He was inventing a new colour. I'd kill to see
inside his studio. A space like that lets you wear a purpose,
plus you can get your hands dirty. Like work,

like fucking, art demands certain favourable conditions to click.
Over coffee, my friend Emily says “Really? Artists? More than
investment bankers, hey?” and we laugh, shaking off the truth.
I count all my old flames and clench up. I'm keeping up.
But when will I clear my surfaces of this debris and
see in colour? When—when—will I learn how to type?
And, oh, to grow pickpocket eyes and roam the city
groping invisibly, taking what I want without a thought,
with plain, grasping lust in my nerves. Like the old sight
but fun, like playing in the grass at night.

eight

Footsie

In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested. ~Stanley Rous, 1952

At home, the play-by-play shakes
as beating feet and screamed-hoarse throats
shake the televised Toronto stadium
the long view of a North American soccer league
including thunder sticks and confetti in team colours
while your shrieking extends from living room
to dining room, your reach from my leg
to my outstretched hand (the wrist showing
your seven-tooth tattoo even hours later)
because where I stand
is where you stand
in the held breath
between you and walking.

You quiet as I stalk the few blocks
to the park where slowly loosening muscles
and the coarse sweetness of pollen
informs me and the shiny-suited men
arriving in ones and twos of spring;
the kookum who followed the five-year-old
to the edge of our blanket squints
as their feet begin to caress the early evening
also three four soccer balls
for the white man
responsible for your blue eyes.
(In this careful time between egg yolks
and whole milk I watch
as you eat dirt briquettes and tender blades
with black-tongued abandon
add to the confusion
by fathering yourself on strangers
with the outstretched pudge
of your pointing finger:
da-da! da-da!)

As the warm-up ends, avenue aspens
loose fluffy Christmas drag
from drooping catkins
into that slanting photogenic sun -
making all our smiles wider toothier
but the black man so glad to be running
after the simulacrum of a boyhood elsewhere
his face is an architecture
of tooth and cheek
while the toddler scoots among the muscled legs
and quick feet of Saturday night.
Amidst the hum of traffic
and the accented patter of old friends
you ignore me, clinging to the spokes
and struts of the stroller
as we all find some semblance
of balance.

seven

substitution 12

The green infestation of inchworm
arching after newleafnewleafnewleafnewleaf
for the white slivers of nail
you won’t let me clip
as you reach for me again
andagainandagainandagain

Agoraphobia

It's safe in here.
Away from eyes and ears
or fingers.

It's warm in here.
No cold blasts of air
or rejection.

It's solid in here.
No expectations to fail
to fulfill for myself
or others.

It's comfy in here.
Cuddled up under covers
or fantasy.

It's smooth in here.
No bumps to stumble on
or miracles.

wee friday poem

blossom


blossom is a word
that can be tucked
into your cheek
and held
until the moment
you’ve finished
shoving every sock
into the far corner
of the drawer
and decide
to flood your mouth
with summer

Yves and Andy

Perhaps you’ve heard the story
before. Yves says

he’s not fond of canned soup
prefers bistro to beast, sips red

wine at room temperature, thinks
car crashes are best

avoided, stages words that worm
past Andy’s rose-coloured glasses

until he snaps like a blue roller-blind
in a square window—

casts a can from his intricately
inched demonstration,

flattens the cigarette, strategically
sloped for an entire year,

from Yves lip. And once
the pissing match starts,

without wind’s wetting help,
they two-step closer to an artist’s

angry duel: rock, paper, scissors.
The parable being

not how fair you fight
but never leaning in to the hot air

of heart-heavy hands
when they both pick scissors.

French Fries

Shaking salt into the cardboard cathedral,
or smearing ketchup over last week’s sports page—

skinny, crimped, soft, crisp—no matter
what denomination, I’m a sucker for rewards,
especially when they’re deep fried.

Nothing like grease on grease to get me through
a rough patch, a mixed basket with mayo.

Sometimes I want to feel worse,
before I feel better.

No caloric overload compares
to the French fry turned host,
washed down with a pint on a Friday afternoon.



---
This week I've been struggling with poetry. Everything I try to write feels like a practice poem without heart. Oh well. My goal for next week is to write about small moments of joy. I've written enough cranky poems for a while. Wish me luck!

Elegy for a Soldier

In fields of grape vine and hot white dust,
where houses built of mud,
and cloudless skies, crack
with sun and combat;
fear, virility fuse new definitions
of what it means
to be.

Far from the lazy roses of summer,
the lake, the deck,
the case of cold beer;
far from parade grounds of ambition,
the soldier wakes
exhausted, takes a piss, tucks boredom,
lonliness, fear,
into jacket pockets,slams down
his last supper.

In fields of grape vine and hot white dust,
where men/women's eyes commit
to memory, terror, tedium
courage, the comradery,
"shared deprivation" of the hours
- this is no camping trip -
the soldier falls into place,
climbs slowly, slowly-
slow as grainy videos of beginnings,
his tread into mother's outstretched arms-
his final, careful steps

one fated, mud-caked,
white dust stair
at a time.

do-over

one year


your first trip around the sun
you may not have known you were traveling
an ellipse, though you’re familiar
with elements of its geometry –
parabola of breast correlated
to the concavity of your small, warm mouth

now you’re rounding out your orbit
beginning your second loop through
the same set of seasons,
three hundred and sixty degrees of green,
tomorrow you’ll begin to see pattern
in the stretch of light through summer days
and its elastic snap back in fall

you already know so much of the moon’s routine –
forever filling and draining, how the sun can shatter
into a thousand stars on a cloudless night
only to be repaired while you sleep,
and you’ve learned your family’s phases,
that a face may wane – a moment, an hour –
but will always soften approaching perigee with you

homing


you always want to be lost
in tangled trails along the river,
travel snagged on scrawny poplars,
mud-ruts, overgrown green

bike tires doodling through
city parks and paths, tracing arabesques
in suburban warrens and cul-de-sacs

i couldn’t follow
even with my finger
greasing routes onto the map –
straight lines only in the track
of sweat sliding along your sideburn,
breath direct to lungs

no matter how you wind
you can’t shake your sense
of direction, homing strong –
eyelids lined with atlas pages,
flavour of north too large
for you to swallow

Yves Klein’s Trash

is clichéd—treasures I salvage
early one morning, flea marketed
fantasies I find in green
monochromatic plastic,

once famous blue
pitched in polychromatic
fashion. What is leftover

wasted like underwear, another
pair of Klein’s found tucked
under the bed at a new apartment
then properly chucked.

But you were always unique—
your roll-your-own roughness
a Frenchman’s foreign maleness,

those butts unfiltered in ash-trays
littering the rough-smoked museum
of facts, the undeniably erotic
images my fingers reach for

in automation, the desire
to own something of the past,
like the bird that builds a nest

from garbage on the metal ledge
of a don’t walk light,
the red blinking sign half blocked
by twigs and what’s left

of life’s little bits balled in to strings.
And after I’m done my raid
the air reeks of refuse,

bag-slapped by wind’s palm
my own words turn colour-
blind, the most abstract
junk of all.

six

Sun. Traffic moves with only the suggestion
of one-passenger-per exhaust
arms gritty with sun crooked out
of open windows
while cyclists converge on corners
touching tips of tongues
to sweaty upper lips.

In the park, trees bring out leaves from storage
shake out their folds over sticky hems
wriggling with spring’s nervous fingers.
Birds in canopy condos built entirely
of dyed hair and cigarette filters
bide their time
before skies turn sticky with suggestion
and people pick small green scraps
from each other’s shoulders
instead of shaking hands.

Under the trees the shadows move
like the moon through the cycles of the hours;
a busker rehearses, his fingers busy
then his throat
opening
accepting the half-thoughts of elm seed
that breeze the long moist exhale
of everyone out.

Tornado Alley

We're packing up the car,
heading right to
tornado alley
for a whirlwind tour
only days after
a killer whirl
left a path of
broken homes
and death.

We have been through our own
tornado alley --
destruction, mayhem,
power out, electricity gone,
tender trees uprooted, stripped bare,
the water that sustains us poisoned,
our home divided
into two.

Clinging to gratitude that
we haven't been killed yet,
we keep coming back
for more.

As if this time
we'll be able to handle
the rising pressure,
this time our cheap trailer
will stand up to the winds,
this time our vow to rebuild
from the mess left behind
by the last vicious storm
will be fulfilled.

five

When I peeled off the white shirt
ketchup-stained from the hot home fries
in Beasejour I found the red creep
of a wood tick picked up in Giroux
on the collar which I killed
using a shed button from a shirt
I got you for your birthday
standing in the Downtown Bay fingering
Arnold Palmer's seasonal stripes
(green gray blue) and thinking
of the long cool slope of your back
the set of your shoulders and also
how nothing stays clean

heightened


in the dark your whole body listens –
fine hairs along your forearms
attentive, eager to catch
the smallest speck of sound,
eyes and nostrils widen, ready
to receive, your skin picks up
the racket of a thick flock of stars,
maudlin giggle of spring,
and the small sounds:
shallow breathing of moon,
an idea chiming in thoughtful orbit
around your heart, a single bud
groaning to open

I think

...that this isn't quite ready to share, so I'm sharing it. Perhaps another's brain will work better than mine today. I had some trouble with formatting--it took awhile to figure out the line break stuff and I think I've ended up with a different font.

The Blue Revolution

“blue recalls, if anything, the sea and the sky,
the most abstract elements of touchable
and visible nature” Yves Klein


1

Klein knew it was not just staged
squares of IKB so much as the white
      walls behind that sets the mind’s
      placement of scene, and how it is not
presence that orchestrates an endless heart,
one single note continually performed

but absence that eternally holds us in place
and time. Maybe the wind
     works the same, presses in to ample
     open spaces, yet hides some nights behind
horizon’s co-ordinated curtain, softly snags
us in frames half filled with prairie then sky.




2.

Tonight I stroll the farmyard lane —
frogs and tadpoles long crooning,
     coyotes echoed bass
     in a nearby field. The unwavering
sound deafens a nephew’s
grinding truck as he follows me

in the dirt, his easy growl
assuming the role of motor
    as he screeches to a halt beside me.
    We stop in windless dusk
toss rocks at willows woven in water,
listen to another creature whoop

more vocals from reedy roots.
The dog dives at the muddied surface
     shatters an evening choir cloaked by stems
     and suddenly I wish I could sink
up to my knees, catch and hold frogs
and toads and tadpoles, keep

a year’s past uncertainties in glass
mason jars, confine disappointment as creatures
    rescued from a stationary pond
    hours siphoned in to the clear
jar, each tiny second examined
under secured scrutiny then quietly set free.




3.

Wind’s cease-fire stages each scene.
My own performance, the year’s shawl
    wrapped lightly around my shoulders, corners
    loosened by rehearsals. In the wind’s absence
I measure and re-measure the fit—
each day’s rough fabric against white shoulders.

Without the wind—what are we? Smooth
aluminium siding sidled next to each other.
    Neighbours nudged by blind fingers.
    The wind moves us, draws us in
dark ink, pushes us forward. Without it
we are silent, uninhabited blue.

Fences

He pounds fence posts,
drives them deep into rain-softened earth,
his sweat, his muscle, his ache,
each callus of hand and fingertip,
skin sacrifice to his land;

his fence, his mark, his tattoo,
his wolf piss around the four corners of his plot,
semaphore
—this is mine, these are mine
who live within these wooden walls—
fuck you, who dares breach,
fuck you who climbs,
fuck you who peers
into my sweet, warm world.

He builds fences—
a friend, a case of beer,
a level, some string,
a hammer, saw, nails,
a bunch of wood,
a small boy looking on-
Saturday afternoon,
while the world sleeps,
makes love, watches hockey,
writes poetry, eats;

he builds fences.

Less than Perfect

The Yankee pitcher is flirting with
the perfect game
and I can barely stand to watch,
to take on the responsibility of
Shrodinger's fan:
Does the mere act of my attention
affect the final result?

Meanwhile, on the next
channel, the Queen is at
the Kentucky Derby.
The announcer, casting about
for something to fill the too-long moments
before the race begins
tells us that seeing this race
has been one of her Majesty's
lifelong dreams.

I'm startled, bemused.
What's a queen doing with dreams?
What the hell else is on her to-do list?
You are already Queen!
There are shows for people longing
to be Queen for a Day,
and you're already there!

A perfect day I guess that means,
lacking only a trip to this horse race
or that.
Or for pitchers,
the opportunity to stand before
the frenzied masses
and focus only
on the batter before him
one at a time
until all twenty-seven are disposed of.

Rarer than queens.
There've been dozens of those,
but only fifteen perfect games.

I look away for a second,
distracted by the shout of
kids through the window.
From the television,
the crack of the bat.
It's over the wall.
It's over.

Street Sense comes in first,
Hard Spun just behind,
but there's no crown for second
or glory for those who took
a perfect game
into the eighth.


(Thanks to Bren for the hot tip!)

sunday two

waiting for leonard cohen


sunday night and you’re waiting
for leonard cohen to call –
like all those nights
you were fourteen or twenty-one
or thirty and you fell
asleep between blank pages
of an open notebook

leonard cohen didn’t knock
on the screen door
of your parents’ house –
his car broken down
on the suburban cul-de-sac,
or seeking shelter
for an urgent poem

he didn’t find your address
on a wayward scrap and follow
your scent from montreal or l.a.
to the stacks of a university library
to rest his palm on your forehead

but now you’re waiting
for leonard cohen
to read your name
in an obscure literary journal
and sweet-talk the local operator
into giving up your phone number



Maybe I'm feeling guilty for not posting yesterday, so here's two today. This L.C. piece is one of a series I started working on last May Day. I wrote the first stanza of this ages ago, but just rounded out the rest today.

sunday one

monday


sunday morning sleep
slowly relinquishes its hold
over your eyes,
lashes unraveling
and reknit
until you can focus
on open

moments out of the womb
of sleep and your first instinct
is to set the alarm
for tomorrow, and monday
seeps into our sheets
and clothes, chafing
all day, a fact
that won’t lie still

four

I wanted to write an ironic poem
about the lazy black cat & the mail carrier
locked in mid-morning mortal combat
the mail carrier’s single feint was refusing
to deliver to that house
any more
the cat’s tactics are familiar & include the growl
the stalk, the quick climb up calves
made wiry by walking
onto regulation navy & beyond
to slice at eyes; also, not blinking
when the camera’s iris opened & shut
for the wink wink second-to-last item
on Winnipeg’s evening news
then I was going to cleverly allude
to the kicker – the mooncalf born with six legs
but able to gambol in the flat bright light
of mid-day Nebraska
because its two extra legs, knobby & newborn
don’t quite touch the ground
but mocking bureaucracy is cheap sport
and deformations
are just no fun.

I wanted to write an elegiac poem
about half-frozen blood, the alley it was spilled in
and the man who at the end
of a boozy night had his throat cut
by a friend & lost it
how the temperature dropped (like a body)
overnight the blood becoming just another pool
of salty slush on the asphalt
in the alley behind one of my old addresses
how photographers gathered the next day
to shoot bike treads sneakers
beaters in blood
because the fire service didn’t bother
to wash it away until early afternoon
but we all know this is a bad way to die
and nothing came
after that.

I wanted to write a tender poem
about my daughter that marked the moment
months in months in her dry furious cheeks
were first wetted down
how the bruised pear between my legs
gave a final meaty contraction a glad twang
at this first drop in the bucket
but I don’t remember when it was & there is no poetry
in sour two-day-old laundry & the greasy crumbs
in the seams of my days
& I would still give just about anything
for a moment to myself
& oh fuck she just woke up –

Cinco de Mayo

The first day of
true spring
bikes, flowers, shorts, sun
We celebrate not by
jumping round the maypole
but dancing with sparklers,
christening my balcony
just as I pictured it
when I took the place
in snow-time

The first party of
my new city
avocados, cilantro, plantains, peppers
procured in chinatown
cooking for a sufficient
number of guests
to feel
this is a place
where I have
friends enough
and the likelihood of
more to come

Just as
Cinco de Mayo
celebrates a
triumphant battle
rather than the
arrival of final
independence

I will take
this victory
and still hope
to win the war

More about the wind

Like Yves Klein I'm becoming obsessed with one element: the wind. Of course, it's hard not to these days. I wrote this one yesterday, but because of laptop woes, I was unable to retrieve it until today.



The world’s most challenging puzzle


recoils from winter
urinates umbilical
strings of the nothing
we are in its wake.
And who’s to say
what’s on its mind
other than procreation.
Impersonation.
Impregnation.
More hot air
than fresh breath
it balloons the belly—
punctures imagination’s
sponge, dimples
the mind’s continuous
banding. The wind
reattaches us
annually to a land
sand-banked by dirt-
devils, our own
memory’s hills
mounded each May.

Walking Granville Bridge

in spring, sky placated
but only for now, everything green
or metallic for miles in either direction.
Angry sea a bit of both; hard surface
with chips bitten from it.

To the east and west glass towers--a future
city, beautiful, cheap, terrifying.
A billion shards piped together waiting
for disaster. The hot overcast air
makes its way under my hair.

And there, below, the whole world,
the visible world, every piece
and particle,
about to take flight.

May 5th, Tower Point (again)

Wild camas-
stars of cloudless skies on long thin stems,
restless, green;

some days there is change in the wind,
some days, even trees cease to breath.

Today, I walk one step at a time,
think of how ancients took wild camas,
ate its sweet root, pulled from black earth
beneath groves of naked arbutus.

Today, I remember a place far from here-
where glacier streams, ice-fed lakes
are blue glass,
blue as the camas I walk through-

in the mountains....
last year.

Today, I give myself-one barefoot step,
one piece of clothing at a time,
my skin sweet as camas root-
to the soft bed
of moss, tall stalks of grass,
chocolate lilies, amethyst larkspur,


the long breath,
the patience of the field,

where wild camas grows.

sms 05/05/07

three

Incandescent

“.. …. .- …- . -. --- - …. . .- .-. -.. .- -… .. .-. -.. … .. -. -.-. . .. .-- .- … - .-- . .-.. …- . -.-- . .- .-. … --- .-.. -.. “

- Thomas Alva Edison, 1885.


“In speed contests between expert Morse code operators and expert cellphone SMS text messaging users, Morse code has consistently won, leading to speculation that cellphone manufacturers might someday build interfaces for Morse code input.”

- Wikipedia entry on Morse Code (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code)

1.

Electricity, like gravity, is a force of nature
no one “invented” it;
he did not invent the microphone
he had no machine that talked to the dead
although Edison claimed to have invented wax paper
he probably did not.
Edison did not lose his hearing
it is more accurate to say he was very hard
of hearing & the high-pitched sound
of the telegraph
“beats the babble
of ordinary conversation.”

He liked the phonograph so much
he called it his “baby.”
There are several stories
by people who knew Edison
that tell of him biting into phonographs
sound vibrations travelled through his teeth
to his inner ear.
(He bit the piano at home
as well.)


2.

Edison was a “news butcher” by twelve.
At fifteen, he roamed the country as a “tramp telegrapher”
moving thirteen times in seven years
often working all night
taking messages for trains
and even for the Union Army during the Civil War.
It was later found that people
become more proficient at receiving Morse code
when it was taught as a language that is heard
instead of one read from a page –
to reflect the sound of Morse code
practitioners began to vocalise
a dash as "dah"
and a dot as "dit."

At twenty-four, Edison noticed 16-year-old Mary
punching perforations into telegraph tape;
even on his wedding day
Edison returned to the lab to work
on his stock ticker.

In middle age, Edison still slept on laboratory tables
but he taught 20-year-old Mina Morse
so that they could have secret conversations
when her family was around
(her father held 92 patents
his most famous invention being
the Buckeye Mower
and Reaper)
tapping into each other’s hand.
In Morse code, the letters most commonly used
in the English language are assigned
the shortest sequences
but Edison always had what he needed
and incandescent lighting
is soft enough
for use indoors.


3.

Operators skilled in Morse code
can often "copy" code in their heads
at rates in excess of 40 WPM.
Some operators may have passed 100 WPM.
By this time they are "hearing" phrases
and sentences
rather than words.

In 1877, Edison recorded the first words
on a piece of tin foil.
He recited the nursery rhyme
“Mary Had a Little Lamb”
& the phonograph played the words
back to him.

Edison did not invent the first light bulb
he didn’t invent a hearing aid
he earned 150 patents on telegraph
improvements alone
(his daughter “Dot” claims to have seen Edison
propose marriage to Mina
using Morse code.)


4.

In 1927, Edison told 300 hard-of-hearing adults
"Deaf people should take to reading.”

There is little point in learning to read written Morse;
the sounds of all of the letters and symbols
need to be learned
for both sending and receiving.


5.

Edison once wrote, "I have not heard a bird sing
since I was twelve years old."

A dash is equal to three dots.
The space between parts of the same letter is equal to one dot.
The space between two letters is equal to three dots.
The space between two words is equal to five dots.

When the French navy ceased using Morse code in 1997
the final message transmitted was "Calling all.
This is our last cry
before our eternal silence."


* * *

Sources:

Edison National Historic Site: http://www.nps.gov/archive/edis/home.htm

Wikipedia entry on Morse code: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

Great moments in science / Edison and Light bulb: http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1523482.htm

* * *

Okay, I've got a full blown Edison obsession going...meant to work on a new poem. Only wanted to work on this one.

outdoors, in

shattering


i

the lake breaks up – all crash
and fractured drama
against silent thawing sand
branches shyly budding
beyond the dunes

massive tracts of ice
hammered by heat
into handfuls of melting glass,
glitter that wind will spirit away
in its brazen beak


ii

room: still with sunday, hum
from an inch of open window,
wind sidles along the wall,
slips its sly tongue
behind picture frames

sudden gnash of glass
and the attic floor
awash in ice chips,
glinting and steadfast
unwilling to be swept away

Here we are

Floating above thick trees
Above dark clouds
Above the weeping world

We'd say into the stars then
but that's a lie of omission,
denying the hardships
of what that journey entails

Heading for our own sun-star
gets too hot after only a few blocks --
even our own planet is starting
to feel the need
to scooch back
from the heat

But those other lights
out there
calling to us
are so far, so cold

As fast as I fly
I don't get any closer

The only thing left
is to jump to leap
to have faith, shun doubt

The old ways aren't working
and we don't have time
to screw around
trying to figure out
a logical solution
unlogic is all that remains
reverse inverse the universe
turn it inside out
to jump to a new star

Be in ourselves
the nebula
we are seeking

I am a dirty bowl
coated in dried pasta sauce
untouched vegetables rotting on my face
I smell

Entering the house, the odor and spectacle should drive you back

But
I am heavy ceramic
Unable to move
Unable to care

I need someone to wash me
touch me with warm, soapy hands
scrub me inside
and out

Clean away the depression and put me back on the shelf
waiting
for a new love

Hi all. This is my first year posting.
Thank you so much for your feedback on the egg poem. I was thrilled to read all the comments. I don't write a whole lot of poetry, but this project inspired me to gather some courage to just get out there and work.
I know Ariel and Polly from our time in Winnipeg journalism. I now live in Toronto and work in marketing - usually the opposite of poetry.
- Joanna

Who has patented the wind

The wind isn’t something
to hang around lightly.
Last night’s fury hair-raised—

a paper-eater chewing a mouthful,
the garbage picker rustled by an alley bin,
one lid’s nervous quake—

some ordinary organism yelling
“Don’t let it in!” But my bedroom
window thinks better, moans

with delight as finger’s scurry
the full-breeze flapped, cotton’s
fringed fling, the home’s homely bones

squared in an eye-glassed gape.
Yet there’s something
artful in the wind’s stuttering

determination, the day’s lip
buckled irregular-blue, every tree
bristled by the weathered

vane’s attempt to paint and sell
each of its trademarked frames
the same.

more a snippet than a poem, really

all day


i wait all day
for these ten minutes
awake in our bed,
for your minted breath,
a lick of dark
across my eyelids,
and for the little clicks
your glasses make
as they are folded
and set on the nightstand

two

Incandescent

“.. …. .- …- . -. --- - …. . .- .-. -.. .- -… .. .-. -.. … .. -. -.-. . .. .-- .- … - .-- . .-.. …- . -.-- . .- .-. … --- .-.. -.. “

– Thomas Alva Edison

1.

Electricity, like gravity, is a force of nature
no one “invented” it;
he did not invent the microphone
he had no machine that talked to the dead
although Edison claimed to have invented wax paper
he probably did not
Edison did not lose his hearing
it is more accurate
to say he was very hard of hearing
and that the high-pitched sound of the telegraph
“beats the babble
of ordinary conversation.”

Design for a Cabinet
Design for a Grille For a Phonograph Cabinet
Design for a Grille For a Phonograph Cabinet
Design for a Grille For a Phonograph Cabinet

He liked the phonograph so much
he called it his “baby”
there are several stories by people who knew
that tell of him biting into phonographs
sound vibrations his teeth
his inner ear



2.

Edison worked as a tramp telegrapher
moving thirteen times in seven years
it was later found that people
become more proficient at receiving Morse code
when it is taught as a language that is heard
instead of one read from a page
to reflect the sound of Morse code
practitioners began to vocalise
a dash as "dah"
and a dot as "dit"

Machinery for Perforating Paper for Telegraph Pump
Telegraph Apparatus
Printing Telegraphs
Chemical Telegraphs

The letters most commonly used
in the English language
were assigned
the shortest sequences

He slept on laboratory tables
but taught Mina Morse code
so that they could have secret conversations
when her family was around
they used it as a type
of sign language

Perforators for Automatic Telegraphs
Duplex Telegraphs
Chemical Telegraphy
Automatic Telegraphs

Edison always had what he needed
incandescent lighting is soft enough
for use indoors


* * *


Mmm. This is a mix-n-match found poem from the Thomas Edison home pages and the Wikipedia entry on Morse code that had its impetus from Regan's light bulb blurb. After more than an hour poring over Edison's list of patents, I have no idea if the poem works...oh well.

one year


on your first trip
around the sun
you may not have known
you were traveling
an ellipse, though you’ve learned
elements of its geometry –
parabola of breast,
arc of arms to hold you

now you’re rounding out
your orbit, embarking
on your next long loop
through the same
set of seasons,
three hundred and sixty
degrees of green

tomorrow you’ll begin
to see pattern
in the stretch
of light through days
and its elastic snap
back to dark,
you’ll know the moon
will forever be filling
and draining and that geese
will leave but always
circle back



Ariel, your birthday-poem-for-Anna proposition was my inspiration today. Thanks for the idea... if you like where this is going, this might be a candidate for your project. I think the last stanza needs some work... Let me know if you have comments. And, I require no compensation. BTW: I'm not sure I know what "Labels" mean in blogland. Is this something I should be doing? ~k.

Packing

How is it that all
the bits of here
are so hard to gather
when I want to go there?
What shadow of home
can I fold
to reappear
with familiar lines
in a strange city
full of its own darkness?
Hard angles and noise
at all hours
await my still veins.
I'll take my own thin spoon
to lift foreign soup,
magically delivered,
my spoon
to coax my lips
open
for whatever
feeding I find possible.
I'll take my own brushes
to lay color down
as it appears flashing
in my challenged eyes,
searching for some brightness
to rival the poppies
I leave half exploded
in blooming flames
near the thin blue iris
and tight-budded peonies.
I need to see past the brink
of clematis glowing
in the moonlight
and travel to the sounds
of gulls and rocks,
bridges and boats.
I need to find paints
for matching what I'll find
after the city,
when dawn
first touches land
and night still snores
here by the rivers.
I must carry that
in my bag
for later.

touch

i go for my massage
at the student clinic
but it's far from clinical

the only fleshy contact i've had in weeks
i preen like a cat when her fingers
touch down

i keep my purr silent, safely caged
so she won't think i'm a freak
but inside i'm glowing, so grateful
for this god-sent feeling

of worth, human-ness
deservement of pleasure

then she digs deep
into twisted tissue
untangling knots of
pressure, guilt, doubt
all the unfinished business
i carry around in that crowded
space between my shoulders
under that fragile neck
straining to keep
my head on straight

deep breaths she says
and I comply,
try to find the path
to letting go

Earplugs

For when the city's pulse is too quick and
furious--shouts of construction workers
matching the steam-whine of their instruments,
bicker and twitter of the man and woman
in the apartment next door (her giggle
a piccolo, his basso profundo
palpitating the wall), thuggy buses--
there's you two little orange wonders,
oversized pills to cure the world of noise.
Gone is the dry-hump thump of Beyonce
beyond the wall. Sound becomes a thing
to feel, not hear. Time passed not by watch-tick
or tap-drip but by the soft, predictable
one-two tide of my own quiet blood.

---


A silly aside: the National Post (which I never read b/c the politics drive me crazy) has currently got on a contest in which they ask for poems of any length or form about the doomed incandescent lightbulb. The prize is a box of assorted soon-to-be-obsolete bulbs valued at 95$. I think this is funny and lovely. The deadline is tomorrow afternoon sometime, contest@nationalpost.com. I might write one anyway, but not bother with the National Post.

Nickel

Anchored at the seawall for Sunday cyclists
to puzzle over, washed up at high tide.
Slick brown fur—at first glance,
I thought dog, drowned. Belly-down, forepaws
stretched out like a two-year-old’s rendition
of Superman. Then I saw it’s broad flat
tail, bleached the colour of concrete.
Childhood coin, the price of a jelly candy
turned life-size. Tree-feller, log-jammer,
far from our imagined habitat: scenic marsh
with moose backdrop. Trying to make a go of it
among sewage outlets. An observer
held out his cell phone to take a picture;
there was talk of gnawed aspens
on Granville Island, as cherry blossoms
dotted confetti on park bench couples.
Across the beaver’s eyelids, a flicker—
thinking, it’s still alive—until I saw the fly
searching for a passageway in.

Her eggs are perfect

Her eggs are perfect
whites completely set, yolks warm and runny.

Her eggs are perfect
She used to cook them for her Dad, she says, who died before I was born.

Her eggs are perfect
but on the weekends at the farm, we only ever have his eggs.
It is her day off, I guess, or his domain somehow. Or he just enjoyed
cooking eggs and she enjoyed him enjoying it. I never understood this.

His eggs continue to this day to be over- or under- done, yet
he relies on this one easy meal backed into a widower's corner.

Her eggs were perfect
and I never would have known except by chance one night by default
of nothing else appealing in the fridge, she made dinner for her daughter.

Her eggs were perfect
over easy.

labels

Using my MASSIVE ADMINISTRATIVE POWER, I've added labels to your first posts, primarily to allow non-chronological navigation.

one

Spring fills ditches
decants and distills all the freeze! thaw!
and, careful drunk,
quietly drinks it down
elsewhere snowmelt puddles slop
with the swagger and ripple
of defrosted chorus
croak

Spring chokes up at bridges
rafts and scraped plates of ice stack up
under all that silt and foam half-seen trunks
roll like daredevil barrels
about to go over the falls
elsewhere docks get unmoored
deck chairs tilt ass
over teakettle
sink into reefs of catfish lures
grocery carts
and late summer suicides

Spring pulls trains of grit behind buses
fills mouths with left-over traction
every right angle filled
with foil cellophane
and the perfect chapped lip prints
on cigarettes
smoked down
to the filter

Spring spends seedy pussywillows
then invests in greening moss
mulch sod

May Day

Beneath a blue sky
raspberry dianthus unfolds
jagged pink petals.

day one

melt


so much sun reflected off
our winter-pale skin,
cooped-up breath and limbs unfurling
heat along the beach
that the ice shatters,
becomes clumsy
as our warmth approaches,
something breaking always
just ahead of us –
a tray of glasses smashing,
chimes collapsing –
and the lake licks its lips
before we can tell which
of the solid whitecaps
has gone under

ice stands no chance
against us, the end
of april, the water’s hunger,
but small, ragged holdouts float,
stubborn and doomed, out deep,
and with soft feet
we rub away crosshatch
the ice has dragged
into the sand
in crawling defeat

It's a-MAY-thing!

Hello--

here's my start to the May Day explosion of verse. My brief intro: I'm a Regina writer that leans too far in to the centre, laments the loss of sleep, lisps in the wind while walking, lingers in grocery stores, lounges on freshly mowed lawns, and is lucky enough to take part in writing a poem, probably every other day, for the month of May.

I like the notion of themes so as not to confuse anyone, my theme this year is "After Yves Klein" .


Dear Y

This is the letter I start
late one night after drinking
too much gin.

The unopened voice
splashed and splattered
within paint-can tin.


Dear Y

This is the letter that starts
again to speak all things

to say I need
late one night
after drinking. This—

letter brushes the red coat’s
pocketed past.


Dear Y

This is the letter that undresses
what it would, addresses
what it should—

bristles thin plumes, mottles
motivation’s scent
but remains unsent

word’s wetness, the paper’s
piece not yet dry.


Dear Y

This is the letter that starts
again and again.



Dear Y

This is the letter
that says not square

burglarizes sky with tri-
angular arms

one mass pillar-pushed—
resemblance stolen
from a post.


Dear Y

This letter says things I sought
to speak late one night,
but never said—

a lick in memory’s inserted
fold, the enveloped eye
enclosed.


Dear Y

This letter is a letter’s
pretense receding.

Past and distance. Some far
away inkblot dispatched.


Dear Y

This letter is our present
acting out—
pretense we’re passing by.


Dear Y

This letter I write
late one night after drinking
too much gin—

why’s sun-roofed
performance uprooted.

May flowers

I'm ready for my flowers
you know, the ones all that rain
in April's gonna bring on

cuz this here is May
and damnit I've had
enough with rain
and thunderclouds

bring me poppies
and lillies and tulips
galore

bring me red ones
and blue ones
and yellow ones
throw in a few pink
if you're so inclined

but you can keep anything orange
it don't match my nail polish
likewise purple
too garish by half

I'm not askin for
nothin fancy
a fistful of daisies
or a field of marsh-roses
that'd do me just fine

dipping day

From the Forgotten English desk calendar I received for Christmas:

On May-morning, the children go out into the country and fetch home the flowering branches of the white-thorn, or boughs of the narrow-leaved elm, which has just put forth its leaves, both of which are called 'May.'

At a later hour, all the boys of the village sally forth with bucket, can, syringe, or other instrument, and avail themselves of a license which the season confers, to dip or well-nigh drown, without regard to person or circumstance, the passenger who has not the protection of 'May' in his hat or button-hole.

The sprig of the hawthorn or elm is probably held to be proof that the bearer has not failed to rise early to do the observance to a morn of May.

- Rev. T.F. Thiselton-Dyer's British Popular Customs, 1876.

The same desk calendar features the following words for the first week of May, should anyone need a starting point for a poem:

Blash: To soak, to drench. A heavy fall of rain. Deluging: sweaping away by inundation. Applied to meat or drink that is thin, weak, flatulent, or viewed as debilitating to the stomach. To blash one's stomach, to drink too copiously of any weak and diluting liquor.

Steeple-hats: Long hats, described as "pearking up like the sphere or shaft ofa steeple, standyng a quarter of a yarde above the croune of their heades, some more, some lesse, as please the phantasies of their inconstant mindes."

Canvas opera: A circus.

Shumpgullion: A glutton.

Ready-comb: In farm houses, a comb was hung by the string to the kitchen door by which the men-servants combed their hair.

Croozle: To make a low, whispering noise, like an infant just on the point of waking; a nursery word.

Englaimed: Furred; clammy.

Introductions

We've got a few new faces round these parts, so I thought it might be useful for each of us to introduce ourselves...like this, for instance:

My name is Ariel Gordon. I'm a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Though I've written both fiction and creative non-fiction, my primary form these days is poetry. I also review books, mostly literary novels, for the Winnipeg Free Press. In addition, I coordinate The Aqua Books/Writers' Collective Free Your Mind Reading Series, a new monthly multi-genre reading series.

My goal for this month is a poem a day.

May starts tomorrow!

Who's in?

I will admit up-front that it is unlikely that I will be a 31-for-31 poster, but I would love to dust off my poetry-writing muscles (just finished an intensive 6-month television writing training program - different muscles!)

Cheers!