11 p.m. in the Vegas Airport

This is my seventh time
in the Vegas Airport
an unplanned excursion
a road trip rerouted to air

Seven times has not proven lucky
The star wars game
won me over with graphic
emblems of my youth and
sucked up my 5 dollars
like so much space debris
on a tractor beam

Someone's playing Wheel of Fortune
one last time on their way out
They spin the wheel,
a cheer goes up from the electronic crowd
as they piss away the few remaining dollars
the Strip forgot to strip from them

The bar's still open for a few last guests
you can tell who has bets on the game
by how far off their stools they lean
meanwhile three feet from the entrance,
a set of kids sleep on pillows
pilfered from circus circus

The hat lying on the chair here
seems like an unlucky loss
one more thing left behind
snatched away by the town's cruel fates
until the young Asian dude scoops
it up, fortune with him again

EARTH POEM

Earth Poem by Nathaniel G. Moore

using a "flinty" voice

Whenever I think of the way we were
I can see our faces, trembling before
photographic flash/flint: like we're looking
at a large golden chest being opened
many coins are in the mouths of a golden Flint.

What is a Flint?

It's a type of bird, very rare, who specializes in ESP education
and administration, very big in Detroit. As large as car parts,

FACTION

the pot you cook it in, like a copper coffin, is actually acute,
tempura mental, clasped to its juices.

As air parks and parkas, teeming with goose down.
it's very familiar.. throaty, almost flinty ...

The size of the bird is not meal-ready.
You have to do some work. Prep work.
You'll have to do some amazing work.

FRACTION

What is a Flint?

The female flint unrolls with tight discordance
on the left ventricle
for a full a half
minute before the guilty teens are killed.

Her voice has arrived. "Shall we kiss on the lips, nose bridge or unlock
the tool die set, mend the serpent rash fix it task?"

You can answer, "Sure."

Or shall I say that I'm sorry? That on any other day of the week
I would have asked you to comb your hair with lavender, honey
and lemon rind trails."

Such a simple opening and so assertive. Within forty-five seconds,
planet announces she is not tied to her guts, not tied to boys,
not particularly concerned about pedestrian ether.

FACTOR

A flint is a source of low density proteins, baked size
A way of feeling the air across coins,
A way of determining an economic return not resolve.
A way to bridge the gap between oxygen, intent and bone

FRACTURE

It's a sonic emblem of hostility, sustenance and cerebral policies.
It's the sight of someone getting up off a couch/cake with coins
stuck to their behind.

It's the way you can't leave things behind.
Your voice will sound flinty
Did you say flinty?
Flinty.
it's very familiar.. throaty, almost flinty ...

FENDER

this poem was from the 12th episode for the 5th season

--

how to be shy: small talk


1.
forget everything
you may already know
about this person
with whom
you can’t avoid speaking

2.
allow an interval –
awkwardly long –
in which he or she
will choose not to speak

3.
if you are in winnipeg,
offer a question
about recent meteorological events

4.
repeat

5.
inquire about pets or lovers,
offer condolences

6.
lose track of the order
in which words
leave your mouth,
hear them
and cringe

7.
use hand gestures
for the first time,
wonder why
you are doing this,
watch your own hands
for the rest
of the conversation

8.
attempt humour,
fail

9.
wish so fervently
for the light to change/
line to move/
movie to start
that it shows
on your face

if you are almond I am almond too

thirteen ways of describing anything has become the archetype
for the worst kind of poem

the airplane flies east & pulls just at the hook between
my third and fourth ventricle

all carved up with rust

I have been without you so long I can no longer distinguish
the colours red, blue

would rather be happy than right

you talked of this once, when the lights went quick down
& you asked if I noticed

in my dream, the streets fill with little epiphanies, and pockets
are already full

three men in the same suit
checkmark boxes on bright yellow foolscap

an advertisement for car audio
obscures a young girl reading scripture

I know this is more than a series
of mere moments

are you receiving me?

Making Potato Salad

Making Potato Salad

The hot potatoes warmed our fingers
as we scraped away the papery skins
exposing white flesh all crumbly and rich
steaming still from the giant water baths.

This is the way they do it
and I’m just here to help.

Chopping onions till tears flow,
dicing red yellow green bell peppers
color like confetti through the white
starch smooth as clouds in a blue bowl.

More chopping, celery ribs into tiny chunks
full of flavor and crunch, right there
with pickle relish for tang and tradition.

Stir in the chopped eggs with sun gold centers
and whiter whites firm as moon slices
slide into mayo and good mustard

into the tub of all things good and tasty,
soon to sit alongside ribs and chicken
all the makings of a birthday feast
assembled by steady loving hands.

Friends and family of every color and description
blend together in the busy yard, a salad of bits
come together, more delicious combined
than just sitting alone untasted.

#2 (as long as love)

as this ring neither begins nor ends 

as the earth rotates 

as the ocean currents persist

as rivers rush and tumble

as crocus lilac rose raspberry returns

as mint colonizes the yard

as trees root themselves

as winter remembers grass

& grass imagines sunlight through the snow

tardy introductory post

This is me, Regan Taylor, semi-permanent Vancouverite, looking unusually contemplative.

This past week I've been on vacation, visiting with my family in Montreal , and so haven't had much time to

a) introduce myself
b) read everyone's first few posts
c) post anything.

This is my second year doing this, and though I fizzled fast last year, I found it thoroughly inspiring and productive. I finished a writing MFA (out at UBC) last year and I'm having some luck publishing things here and there, but I still consider myself a beginner.

I should have a poem and comments ready to shoot into the ether by this evening. It's lovely to be here!

How to name a cougar

Call these stealthy creatures CAT—
long-jointed paws with black

bulging veins flex greased muscles
at people passing by. They live

behind an eight-foot cage,
a yellow metalled family. Sometimes you

can’t stand to watch. They smell
cultivated when you step near. They hunger

six days a week; consume their fill
of rock and soil, those unearthed

bones aching in the elements; stalk
bare land with controlled skill; moan

open mouthed on stones, their powerful
haunches squatted. And you

can’t ignore the endless yelp
of their frequent appetite, the tireless scratch

at mountain’s throat, that ripping
away of earth’s soft belly,

your heart gutted
with each diesel breath.

Holly Show

Holly Show

I never considered holly trees in spring
but sat beneath one
just tonight.
I watched a gliding robin for an hour
at least
while she ferried thrashing
worms and angry bugs across
breeze-rippled foil water
to her gap-mouthed
baby, very round and
not so red-breasted,
perched on the rim of it’s nest—

too-small cup of twigs wedged
in the waxy stellar leaves above me.

I wanted only to rest a moment
on a cool bench after finding
thousands of black tadpoles mass
at the edge of the stone pond,

wriggling apostrophes
in the evening sun
beneath the exclamations
of emerging iris,

but instead I was enchanted
by bird tasks, calls and all sorts
of dusk feedings—

swallows swooping high overhead,
mallards and wood ducks
sliding iridescent reflections in green light

until the birdsongs, traffic noise
and passing leashed
dogs greeted me with awareness—

I regretted I had to leave
and could not spend the night
there in the shimmer of pointed
holly trees
holding baby birds
over the dark water.

how to be shy: the hug


1.
receive only,
do not initiate

2.
watch for the signal:
body traveling within range
of your breath,
arms mimicking the inhalation
of an accordion

3.
hesitate,
do not intercept,
be certain
you are the intended,
then hesitate again

4.
corral panic
away from your face

5.
miscalculate
the landing of arms,
hastily rearrange
your limbs,
laugh self-consciously

6.
prepare for variations:
palm scrubbing
your shoulder blades,
dry kiss on the west side
of your face

7.
lose control
over a small sound
in your throat,
act as if
this hasn’t happened

8.
pretend you are one
who hugs easily, blithely

9.
wait one or two seconds,
release

flamenca txts Malángel

unlace my shus
i wll dnce tangos 4u
sguiriya & seco/
i wll dnce,riojas blud
irth th mseta in jun/
u wll tste frsh cut
lemnz&salt on yr
lps/u wll cry slvr o’s
th oliv grovs wld rses/
blck swllows wll halo
abuv/whn i dnc
4u

Rush-light

Storm-light’s grey clarity and you bluster.
Syllables batter against the rear-view, cling
to the meat of my earlobes
still half-a-city from home.

Rainclouds unroll over rush-hour, its ticking
stale from storage. Mouth open, I blare My Bonny
shoulder-checking headlights
and grit twisters
at the curb.

In evening’s rush-light and traffic’s flare
your face goes bone before you drop off
leaving a body to bob
over swells of asphalt and tar,
a body for me to bundle inside.

* * *

Hey all,

Sorry I've been absent from these parts, lo the first few days of May. And my prodigal poem doesn't entirely redeem me, does it?

But still, glad to be here, glad to see all the activity...

More - much more - later!

A.

from The Banff Sessions;

a lovers place is often ambiguous

darkness like trees, smell a mountain failure
batch, how much

not of hunger but of heart, a trauma
paper-thin weight

is not enough of me blood in pages you
bare lifted hands another

note in pencil shipwreck, there you plied a written
, why you different I am

one spring day fundamental arguments,
through telephone disguise

falls out, pushes love

, you first

Saturday's Poem

All of my great loves
have gotten married now
mostly to people
I don't approve of.

But then, that's not my job
is it?

Three of my great loves
are musicians, two are writers,
a couple in business and
one I don't really keep track of,
despite advances in technology.

Because that's not really my job,
is it?

One of my great loves
is dead, and some of
them can only be found
in books.

But then telling stories
has become my job,
hasn't it?

All of my great loves
have gotten married now

But then, so have I.

Friday's poem

I'm on the road, so posting for 2 days now...

My starter poem from yesterday first:


Solemly, slowly
sensually, stoned-ly
slamming

Obviously, originally
odiously, opportunely
opening

Weirdly, winsomely
wickedly, wantonly
winning

Happily, hauntedly
harrowingly, hotly
hoping

Actually, awfully
artfully, awesomely
advancing

Truly, tastefully
totally, temptingly
trusting

gotta stop writing about the weather...

10k/30km/hr


wind defines your body
as earth

wants to erode you,
roll you, ravage

you rebuff,
straight as a knife blade,
let the wind break
on your chin,
leave tears
on your cheeks

but it’s dogged
in its vocation:
seize, discard

tell yourself
wind is only air,
you are muscle, teeth

bite it, swallow

use it to scrub your lungs,
then spit it out --
rank, used,
inscribed
with your heat
and breath

Meseta

foot west-ward into your shadow—
Malángel, the badass angel with gangrene toes, beckons—

unready,
ascend the great Spanish plain,
your muscles/bones/mind grind one step
one step one step deeper into a gorgeous Death-
wedding of wild orchids, blue flax, blood poppies;

at Carrion de los Condes,
at Monasterio Santa Clara, he comes unbidden
in the scent of oranges from Sevilla,
in the hot shower that cannot wash la Rioja’s red earth from your skin,
in the glass of brandy and smoke and glances of old men

and you embrace him;

in the Meseta,
Malángel rattles plastic bags at 4 a.m.,
bowls stars down the Milky Way,
dances tangos;

in the Meseta,
no resolution, no answer,
just foot and knee and hip and click of stick;

still, the Meseta,

her cathedrals are barley,
her acolytes, black swallows dipping fields,
her angels are storks in towers clacking you on

until exhausted, spent,
the white lace of León’s spires come into sight.

How to name a mountain

It will come to you late at night
as you rumple a strange bed

with all the day’s restlessness,
wrestle pillows into similar

triangular positions, how to
remember a name. Listening to the train’s

howl biting night’s expert ear, you learn
the mind’s pace,

label everything from whiteness
to dying as overwintered secrets.

And in the morning you begin
to call one gloat when it talks

down to you; one claustrophobic
when it closes in; the treed one

pride when it gets in the way
of the horizon.

Nouns linger in dead grasses
unpacked from hibernation’s suitcase,

words you work out
on the treadmill of the tongue

persistent thoughts ironed out,
this smoothing simple the past’s

echo, an outline
you can never fully stash away.

Call this the repeat of what you keep
working on, what you try to translate

and understand, memory’s sharp questions—
things you can’t name.

a poem by John Newlove;

Here is a poem by the late Canadian poet John Newlove (1938-2003) from A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove, edited by Robert McTavish, with an afterword by Jeff Derksen, published by Chaudiere Books in October 2007. “IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA” appeared earlier as “LEONARD, IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA” in a fetschcrift for Leonard Cohen edited by Ken Norris and Michael Fournier, published by The Muses’ Company, and was, admittedly, the main reason I spent my last seventeen or eighteen dollars on the collection, for that, and his poem “THE CAT.” It was mainly for the first. The second poem was good, but not nearly as good as the other. And I thought, the least poem of the later chapbook, THE TASMANIAN DEVIL and other poems (above/ground press, 1999). Newlove acts as apologist for the pessimism that too many have seen in his work, to the exclusion of so much else, including the dry humour of “the machine / in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.”

IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA

The streets are full of overweight corporals,
of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia
of a capital city, struggling through the snow.

There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument
is stroking it incisively, the machine
in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.
A shadowy technician says alternately,
Breathe, and, You may stop now.
It is not unreasonable to be unhappy.

related notes: see my earlier piece on more of Newlove's poems here; or this one;

the sleep-over

she wonders if he will comfort himself
so easily with words
when he is older -
will he chatter himself into deep sleep when is four and forty-four?
she hopes...

he awakens with the dawn.
his untimely stir has me hoping that this is a mistake.
have i dreamt the little boy who fell asleep on my chest?
i squint one eye open and his sunny smile awaits me. he is seated upright, looking down at my face and proving himself french by the flailing of his arms as he feverishly spews out words and words and words. it is clear that they are important, though i understand not one. it isn’t french he is speaking, nor english nor spanish. I have spoken no others to him, although... he knows the language of all things unseen, of that i have made certain; he surpasses me now in the language of wind and of rain (when the sun shines) and of trains not yet arrived.

good morning, sunshine, i try out my lips. qu’est-ce-qu’il y a, mon bonhomme?

his words are well chosen and he has decided against periods. but like saramago and blais, he has mastered the comma with his soft sighful pauses. expressive, articulate, he points to the sun behind the closed blind and he looks at me and he beams.

ah, yes, how silly of me...he speaks sun. (adults can be quite slow at catching on, as you know.)
i smile back, i say “OUI!”.

he is pleased i understand and we are now in agreement that all has been said on the subject of dawn. with his little boy legs, he bravely descends the lofty bed and pitter-patters his way in the direction of day.
.

day two

(Anyone know how to change the spacing between words. I need to do that here, to give a sense of the rhythm, but the spaces get lost when I publish...)


heavy bag



slap of gloved knuckle,
flint on leather

jab jab jabjab

cross

machine-accurate,
bolt through the bag
cross cross

fist-flicker:
jabjabjabjab
jabjab
jab

(breathe, drag sleeve along forehead)

cross cross cross clean, heavy

slick, distant kisses
one/TWO
one/TWO
one/TWO
etc.
(breathe)

jab

cross

fire feeds on muscle,
spreads every throw
jab jab jab

flame rages, arm stumbles
jab

cross

cross cross cross
until right arm rusts through,
left already ash

(breathe)
(breathe)

k@z, 1

in which k's life quest & it's attendant dangers manifest

truth -- taut -- trips over k's sentence 

             the true path is along a rope, not a rope

             suspended way up in the air, but rather

             only just over the ground.

k stumbles onto z's paths

withdraws

deepest chasms

or lava flows border 

precise & urgent steps

(the italicized section is from Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms. Trans. Michael Hofmann.  New York: Schocken, 2006.)

from The Banff Sessions;

curves me writing, mountain blue jeans down
, to strip your lines a weather

whether place, a lovers
warm tectonic, plate

overlooks a thin hand, lake louise, a thunder
where there were no cloud

transforming into peaks

the war is leaving architecture, desire breeds
& multiplies, says stick it

would molehill out a slow full snow

Reccie

He’s on leave. She’s AWOL. He txts, je suis ici. She carries daffodils. For him. Wears polka dot gloves. Commercial Drive. Little Italy. Torte di Limone. Little shots of espresso in the afternoon.

warm up poem

feint


robin threads a worm
sure and precise
as it unlaces the backyard,
but even now, may,
we’re too timid to speak
the word spring aloud

we can’t trust the sun
or anything green,
call the rhubarb foolish
but wish we had its confidence,
the clear, sweet faith of warblers

folded tight as leaf-buds
we’ll wait until we’re certain
the footsteps have receded

Back again from Webster Groves

This is my 4th year writing with May Day. I am still tending a small midwestern corner of herbs and flowers, active with both Loosley Identified womens poetry collective and the local literary community, inlcuding River Styx. I will be in their reading at Duff's on the 19th. More often I write privately and live quietly. My life is simple, cooking and caring for the earth, watching generations emerge.


Zinnia & Marigold

The seeds are not enough
alone. They require so much more.
Even with the season
unfolding like a rainbow fan
hinged on sunshine with rain tassels
the black specks hide, barely
covered with compost, coded
by a flowering ancestor to grow
when water softens resolve
when warmth allows the code
to unfold again. The planting
is always the first wave of magic
waiting the for the slow color
to emerge, tumbling upward,
spilling into the audience,
the crowd of seating tiny lilies
in white granny caps, the nearly
spent tulips already through
with their stage time.
The curtain of sky draws blue.
These seeds are not enough
without all the hands required,
the soft stirring
of the soil around the promises
laid down before a storm.
Drops of rivers and oceans
head this way, a wet show
to fall on the quiet scene,
carried on what may be
what is needed. The show
must go on.

Looking for Real

Astrology.com said that I would be rubbing up against sandpaper today
So I felt duly warned when I met him at six, in the lobby of the grand hotel.
He ordered two martinis and showed me the (not-so-secret)
Secrets of the seventh floor, uninhabited even by us.

He parked the Porsche underneath the BMW in his toy-filled garage
Wanting to play his latest composition on his newest grand piano
Before calling it a night. He wasn’t done with me yet, he said.
I placed my body against the polished ebony hoping I could feel him while he played.

My heart skipped a beat when he showed me his latest acquisition
Sand-papered acrylic is the latest, he said. I rubbed the distorted tree with my fingers
But I couldn’t feel it either, the painted tree protected by plastic
So I reached for his five o’clock shadow, now desperate to feel anything at all.

Do you ever wear make-up? he asked. I know he wants me polished also
Because I might stand out amongst the waxed cars that could feed a small village
And the lacquered sandpaper acquisition, and the shiny people he will want me to meet.
I see you dancing in a field of daisies, he says. I say nothing to the man who doesn’t see.

I am in their midst, in the Botox ballroom of bosomed blonde women.
They have all come, the beautiful people and for a moment I am infected by fairytale lives
Filled with fairytale stories. But my heart sinks at the sadness they are unable to cover with
Their costly new immortal skins. I hold him tight as I would a child.

Then I leave the museum he calls home where we had hoped for respite from our lonely lives
And I know that he will sleep well in his perfect bed near the fireplace by the Klimt.
He will wake up early to his perfect life so he can rush about living his perfect dreams with the perfect women that
Belong to him. And soon he will forget the song he played for me or the seventh floor of the grand hotel.

He will not dream of daisies or of dancing French girls. He will forget how to pronounce my name
Then he will forget my name, and soon he will forget me. We will bump into each other in the lobby
Of some grand hotel one day. He will be with some forged woman avec martini on his way to the seventeenth
Floor to show her a secret. And in the flash of my smile he will wonder if he is required to remember me.

rob mclennan's first May-Day post;

Okay, so this is my first post to such a thing as well; what can I tell you? I'm finishing up my tenure at the end of this month as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and then back to Ottawa to promote the upcoming ottawa small press book fair that I've been running twice a year since 1994. Too much! Here is a fragment of a longer thing I was working on last week, while at the Banff Writing Studio [see my other post on such here].

from The Banff Sessions

mouth at knees your back,
a downward mastery of slopes

do you breathe me, trees?

pacific out a breeze, warm air
would subvert, slide

this lake of little wishes

in its mastery, floorboards failure
down the mountain path

month-watch, switch & bait,
a cornerstone of halves

tectonic caution, apple waves

little wonder, this were fishes,
would the tongue insider be falling

, falling


rob mclennan
Edmonton AB

How to name a deer

Call him Joe. He will wear army green
in a pub on the corner of Broad and 9th

where his fatigues match your own
throbbing feet, although removing boots

that have sucked on work’s fungus
for nine straight hours is not

recommended. Take a seat, your back to him—
pretend this camouflage works.

Your friend perches across from you,
scopes him for movement.

The manuals predict that the common Joe
will mimic the actions of the female

if they are interested in getting closer. You walk
by him to get to the bathroom. He remains seated.

You order dry ribs and red wine. He drinks beer.
Once engaged, the manuals calculate, the Joe

will easily feed from your hand. You stand,
linger at pictures decorating the walls. He disappears

into the washroom. There are limits to the timing
of this traditional activity. You have one hour.

You finish your nosh, stand and gather your coat.
It is then that he lifts his head, gazes directly at you.

Your eyes will lock with the Joe, two
tables away, hold that blue frozen for more

than the textbook record of ten seconds,
a smile slick as an arrow slipping from your lips.

His eyes will follow as you walk to him,
then past, the dry rib in his fingers, falling.

it's may! it's me

hey all, i'm melanie, & this is my first time participating in the Mayday Poems project. most of the time i'm a PhD candidate at the University of Manitoba, but i recently sent out my first poetry manuscript.

i've got some crazy travel planned this month, but i'm going to try for between 15 and 20 new poems this month.

2nd Lieutenant

Chew them, tuck them between your lip and teeth—
Afghanistan, Panjawaii, Kandahar—cock your ear,
hear Alexander mark the pocked Ring Road;

You want desert boots/the hot iron highway; I want
to sleep beneath mulberries; I want to hear you whisper,
“Come woman, study pomegranate, wild roses, the desert.”

You, master maps, theorize tactic, ordnance,
sweat, slog thirty kilos of gun and water, study
white phosphorus; I, pick at words, my carrion;

know only how to walk. One step at a time; You, turn east
when I tell you I’m going over; Draw smokes
from the thigh pocket of your greens, your forearms inked

with your babies’ birthdates, your wife walleted;
Soldier, I will pick bouquets of bullets for you,
bowls of blood flowers under Kandahar’s wolf

moon; Let me strike a match for you, light another cigarette;
Let me inhale, drag deep; For you James, I
will taste hot salt.

a

a is for apple. a is always the first. alludes across ages, apes aspects of art. an alibi for its aggression, anarchic. an admitted asexual, a sexual action, a is up for anything. a comes, arcing, arriving at an absence near you. and abusive, a is a serious affliction. a takes and is taken, attracts action, advocates absinthe. addicted, an animal, automatic in its actions, accountable for nothing. ah, but its attraction is its attitude. are any as arrogant. advancing at the apex of the alphabet, and again, and for all time. amen.



---there is an introductory attempt, will be on vacation for a while and in a week or so, hope all goes well in the meantime.

¡Hello, Bonjour, Hola!

My name is Marjo and, umm...okay, I’ll just come out and say it. I’m a virgin May Day-er. There, I’ve said it. It gets worse, though. Writing has always held a valuable place in my life, but I haven’t truly tried my hand at poetry since High School. And even then, I answered to most poetry assignments by walking into the classroom with my right hand wrapped around the neck of my faithful El Dégas. I found it easier to share my words through melody.

I am since an autodidact. Leaving corporate life well behind me a few years ago, I’ve been passionately pursuing several artistic interests much closer to my heart than the green cubicle that held me prisoner for far too long, allowed.

I am grateful and feel humbled to be invited among you all. My goal is, quite simply, to wRiTe!, to learn and to grow, one word at a time. And having only recently joined the world of publishers as a short-story writer, and the inevitable rejection letters that come with, I welcome your feedback and any constructive criticism you May be willing to offer. Donc, je vous demande de m’aider, s’il-vous-plaît! Et, merci...

MAY DAY POETRY WITH MR. MOORE

Featured poets Phil Hall author of Oak Hunch (Brick Books, 2005)and Angela Hibbs author of Passport (DC Books, 2006)

Phil's poem first, then Angela's. Discuss. Share. Read. Enjoy.



Killdeer

on my oozing stumps
has drummd her wings long & hard

whipped the years' butcher block rings
into creche shavings

beaten nests of feathered chips
by simulated soar

folded herself into my pages
boatingly

her desperate ruse of broken wing
has settled into gunwales

her closed cry
a prow's nib

the stumps' roots
I thought destined to be fences

are a mob of keels righting
little brown-speckled eggs

safe-adrift-hoving-to
as cloud-shadow swamps fields

the age of flights is followed
by the age of sail

White

The door moves with the fan:
curtain exhales; door slams;

screen sucks curtain in, door opens.
My body is whitewashed walls;

my body is an empty shop window.
My mouth clogged, overflows

with doctor's gauze; wheeled through
the hospital; kept cool

to prevent the spread of germs.
Post-op, I was starving,

stopped with blood and bandages,
soaking with each beat

of druggy heart.
A red-nailed nurse explains,

the Doctor removed your home.
It'll not bother you

anymore, sloshes it

in its jar of formaldehyde.

A white pigeon on white roof,
sky overcast.

Kissing Dead Girls (REVIEW)

Preview of review forthcoming at Danforth Review

Kissing Dead Girls by Daphne Gottlieb is exquisite, globally-sourced, beyond the realm of the “everyday”, which for some reason, in addition to the word “weave” has become routine review words for poetry criticism in recent times. It’s quickly become my favourite poetry release of 2008, though I feel like a real creep reading it in public because of the title, which of course, is way creepier when I write about that in a review than simply well, not mentioning it.

Gottlieb teaches at the New College of California and is the editor of Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader and the forthcoming Fucking Daphne, as well as the author of Final Girl, Why Things Burn, and Pelt. At times Gottlieb is operating without a poetry manuscript manual, corrosively entering and occupying the literary spaces of other genres including drama, the novel / fiction and the essay. Her found poetry, crafted from special interest web curiosity, culls and gels in a sort of erasure style, using italics to different sources that include musings and mashings of existing work that compliments and challenges original form. Kissing Dead Girls is quite simply superbly crafted, chameleonic. Though it is quickly dressed and out the door before you remember their name, you can’t write it off as a pretty poetry fuck-a-thon.

With post-gender realism and none of the sentimental drivel driving points home no one cares about, the voice explodes and shatters with human special effects. Open it up anywhere and you’ll find a cerebral interrogation, hell bent on expressing all of life’s pitiful pitfalls. It’s a collection suffused with passion, aggression and linguistic finality: Gottlieb’s prowess is not excessive but a tool to reveal poem characters caught in the tantalizing web of a sexual dysfunction. In the throes of poetry, this work would be worth seeing performed live.

Using dialogue, confessions, interviews, erotica, Gottlieb’s sexual manifesto is intelligent, lyrical and giving, reminiscent of The Happy Birthday of Death, or Pussy King of the Pirates, Kissing Dead Girls moves in and out of categorical restraints, voice and form, and is entirely worth investigating. Not a safe release, not throwaway smut, but essential smut, reclassified as purging catharsis, as found in ‘The Real Deal’ where Gottlieb revisits Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” a monster rendition of agony, shame and reality:

“She is ready to be a good little girl, the best girl, she wants to be Daddy’s best girl. She doesn’t make it to work for two days. Her jaw is sore. She can’t sit down because her ass is welted and her cunt is raw and Daddy leaves a message on her phone. It’s Father’s Day. She didn’t call him.”

‘Glass Onion’, is a calm musing on the disposable culture of sex. Gottlieb’s poetry itself enters the difficult terrain of recreating physical empathy and has obviously toiled hard for a meaningful work that cannot be classified as everyday, the official word of 2007 poetry criticism worldwide. The perfect book for the confused pedestrian who thinks in text speak and grunts, with too much “everyday” weaving in and out of their truly miserable lives. (Nathaniel G. Moore, author of Let's Pretend We Never Met)

NGM's May Day Intro

Hello. I'm Nathaniel G. Moore from Toronto though I do infect the literary communities of New York and Montreal from time to time... I'll be posting some reviews here of some books published by Soft Skull and other small presses quite soon. In the meantime, check out Critical Crushes poetry archives for some reviews including David McGimpsey's Sitcom, Cat Power, Canada's Next Top Poet, rob mclennan and others...

I think there's a clip to my Catullus book as well in the search salad...

I'm Tracy Hamon, from Regina, but this year I'm writing from Banff where I'm taking part in the writing studio. This is the only picture of me I have on my laptop. Sort of looks like me. It'll have to do.

I'm not sure I'm going with a theme, but if I do, it's the theme of naming things. I think that as poets/or writers we name things all the time, so why not explore that option in the form of poetry. I'm not sure how much I'll post, or how often I'll get to feedback, or what exactly I'm doing anymore, but this is my third year as a Mayday poet, and I'm still as excited about it as I was the first time.

I'm a poet who writes poetry. It's almost May. I'll be writing some poems. Why not read them.

My notebook doesn't recognize me anymore. May Day! May Day!

I'm aiming for 31 poems this year, but I might regret putting that in print -- even virtually so. (Especially if the garden ever thaws.)

Looking forward to some productivity.

~ Kerry

Okay, this is SMSteele writing from the west coast. I was a bit of a dog poet last year because I left mid-May to walk 800 km across northern Spain. To make up for it, I'll write some Spain pieces this year.

My big news is that I'm one of five artists chosen to be a war artist with the 2008-2009 Canadian Forces Artist Program... the first poet in the program's 90+ year history (Alec Colville, A.Y. Jackson etc. are previous war artists). I hope to be going to Afghanistan in the next 18 months. So I'll probably try some soldier pieces out on you this year too.

Thanks for the invite, I look forward to reading everyone's work and hearing what they've got to say about mine.

yours, narratively inclined,

SMSteele

oh yes, on Friday I'm reading at a reception put on by the local firechief for a bunch of firefighters who are here from Kabul... the local firechief has invited them over to train and has asked me to write something for them... I've written something called the Firefighters of Kabul... hope it works...

Back in the Fold

Jonathan Ball here. I was part of the first May Day blog and happy to return to the project. I am originally from various parts of Ontario and lived in Winnipeg from 1998-2005 and now live in Calgary where I am completing a PhD in English. I am studying Canadian literature and creative writing with a focus on experimental art.

I write most everything, primarily fiction and poetry. I've got a poetry book forthcoming from Bookthug (The Words of the Book, co-written with kevin mcpherson eckhoff) and have published poetry and fiction all over Canada and in the US and Australia. I am currently the Managing Editor of dANDelion magazine and also a filmmaker who has directed two films and worked on a bunch more. My film Spoony B was sold to the Comedy Network on a limited license which ends on Halloween of this year.

I used to publish chapbooks as The Martian Press but stopped because it was just taking up all my time and money. However, I love chapbooks and haven't done one for far too long, so my goal during May is to write a draft of a complete chapbook of roughly 30 pages. The project I've chosen to work on is a text called Alphabext which I have been planning to write for some time. I will be combining and sculpting the machine-generated results from www.googlism.com for each letter of the alphabet with original material to create a sort of twisted, avant-garde alphabet book. Let the games begin!

Get to know me!

Hello! Polly here!

I currently live in Toronto (not pictured here), but I lived in Winnipeg for 8 years before that. I've also lived in Nova Scotia and 9 of the United States (dual citizen), as well as England and Poland.

On the poetry side of things, I've had poetry appear in CV2 and Lichen and a writing group chapbook called 10 Best Pages. I was commissioned by CBC Radio for its 2006 Poetry FaceOff. This will be my fourth year participating in May Day.

But my creative focus for the last few years has been film and television. I wrote/ directed/ produced a couple of 16mm films, an experimental black and white video short, and a stop-motion animated short. I also served as script supervisor/assistant director on several Winnipeg short films.

A little over a year ago, I completed the Canadian Film Centre’s PrimeTime Television Writing Program. Over the last year, I've been the Associate Producer on a travel show called Bump! which airs on OutTV here in Canada, and around the world. I've got a couple feature scripts on the go as well as a couple of television series ideas I'm trying to get into development.

I miss poetry though, so this is a great way for me to get back to "short form" story-telling!

As far as my goals for this year's May Day project, I would like to complete 15-20 poems by the end of the month.

I look forward to reading everyone's work!

The ball, rolling...

Hey all,

I thought I'd get things going by introducing myself and also presenting youse with a statement of purpose.

My name is Ariel Gordon. With Polly Washburn, I'm a co-founder of May Day.

In terms of my stats, my whys and wherefores, basically I'm a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. My poetry has recently appeared in Prairie Fire, QWERTY, and ::stonestone:: and have also circulated on buses in Manitoba and Alberta.

A hand-made limited-edition chapbook of pregnancy and mothering poems, The navel gaze, is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in summer 2008.

In my other life, I'm Events Coordinator at bookstore/bistro Aqua Books and write a weekly column on writing and publishing news for the Winnipeg Free Press' Sunday Books Section.

My goal for the fourth year of May Day is to write/post 3-4 poems per week. I don't know if those 3-4 poems will emerge on a timely schedule, say Mon/Wed/Fri/Sun or Tues/Thurs/Sat, or if they'll be all willy-nilly, but them's the goals...

It should go without saying that I'm looking forward to the month of poems (and lessening permafreeze)...

Less than a week to go!

I'm excited to see the names of new participants and returnees! May Day Play Yay!

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