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| Joshua Trotter reading from Mission Creep (Coach House) |
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| David Solway reading from Installations (Signal Editions) |
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| Derek Webster reading from Mockingbird (Signal Editions) |
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| (From left) Talya Rubin, Derek Webster and Pat Webster |
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| (From bottom left:) Jennifer Varkonyi, Carmine Starnino, Simon Dardick, Derek Webster and Saleema Nawaz Webster |
ARMADILLO
My lover spent his summer in the south,
carving armadillos from their husks. It was, to hear him
say it, an experience—the term people save
for the places they hate. He spent June in the sunroom
with a pitcher of sweet tea and a picture of me.
By August, just the tea, watching hicks
suck cigarettes through long, aristocratic
sticks, papaya seeds stuck between their burnt
sienna teeth. Everything was burnt there. My lover
carved years off his life with the very same knife
the armadillos learned to fear. Where are they
now, I asked him as snowfall took care
of the candles I'd lit. The not-quite-rodents, the not-quite-reptiles,
not-quite-right gatecrashers of the ark?
How does their nudity suit them? Do they sigh
all cool, how we sighed last year, when we threw our anoraks
off and found we had that chalet to ourselves?
If we were ever blameless, it was then. I held your locks
in a Chinese bun as you went south indeed,
throwing, upon my balls, your tongue, how sea urchins
throw their stomachs upon the coral reefs they eat.
At which point my lover raised his knife
to my hairline, scalped me masterfully and poured,
into my open brain, a tea so cold and sweet.
TALK
I thought I’d see you at one
of the shows this summer. If so,
talk might have gone in a million
directions, and been awkward, as we’d likely
keep it small, complaining of the lineups
at the beer tent, then finding
a break in the crowd to slip away.
Talk was never our problem;
all those late-night think-tanks
after closing the bar, cooking up
subtleties on invented games,
rules to ‘Quick Drinks’
or ‘Etch-a-Sketch Portraits.’
Though most talk was art – what might
be good and where to find it –
while we watched the floor dry,
squashed in the booth
with the lights turned low.
I know you,
so was less and less surprised
when you sidestepped
issues people tried to raise,
and worse, twisted them
into betrayal by your stubborn,
bottled-up imagination. They
were trying to show they cared
even while you bulldozed into rooms,
grim as a defeated army.
Meanwhile, work is work,
late home, five hours sleep,
coffee, then a nap. You’ve missed
a birth or two, the filled and emptied diapers
of friends’ burping offspring,
and I’ve moved, so if you ever
picture me, I don’t know where.
Mostly, when I think of you, I see
you angry and mistaken.
Almost daily, I bike past
your old studio
and the re-rented house,
rooms where our unsuspecting ghosts
still drink and smoke, contra Yeats,
imperfect on every count.
CLONE
Four should be enough of me for me. No, three.
They might not easily apprehend, but they can do,
and doing’s the battle I get them to attend.
To send them out with grocery lists and day-to-days;
milk, bread, whatever I yen for between bread, they’ll even
plate it carefully so I can keep on teasing out this stuff.
Parties, several at once, they drink like cops
filling late-month quotas, engage the feckless
literati with The Phaedrus while I seduce their wives.
That means course enrolment. Tuition. Tough;
I learn to play guitar unburdened during
their job interviews. Finally fangle origami.
It’s a bit like being God, seeing myself from behind,
askance in the way you can’t but want to. The sum
of our actions define me while they live my lives
as though committing crimes. Lately we don’t look
each other in the eye. They’re not reading dictionaries
in the off hours. Unfashionably late, on the skive
at the local, making fools of me. Unviable.
Soon and earlier than they think, with such retrograde
expectancy, they’ll drown in the last air left them.
So it’s a waiting game. Time for a fresh start; tonight
I’ll hit the town and rake the coals they’ve burned. I am
going to wear my favourite shirt, the brown one. Or am I.
MEAN MATT
He grew up in the woods without a lake in sight.
His mother was a hellcat and his father was an itch.
What's good is rarely good.
His Kmart aesthetic is infectious—he comes over once
and your curtains are floral patterned and stained for weeks.
Always flushes so you don't know what was there.
He's a slow waltz with a gorgeous someone across a floor of tacks.
Loves like a Brillo pad. Attentive as an empty fridge.
And what exactly did you expect?
He labours through rain season, mud season,
sailing a sharp-blue kite through the middle of the night.
This is what we think of when clouds appear.
Once worked as a dentist on an oil rig. He's what's
fresh rust and what's dried blood.
But he's good at what he does.
Sees daughters as spare parts, sons as useless legislation.
Watches our sisters from a webcam no one knows is there.
It's always our fault for not knowing better.
He has a bulldog's jaw, the heart of an old engine.
And here he is singing a sing of apology
for arriving late to your birthday party.
He brought a present, and his intentions are as clear
as a sliver of glass in a chocolate cake.
This will only be hard on one of you. Guess who?
THE SHIPPING CONTAINER
There must be a method of transport
because there are regulations about the movement
of dangerous goods. You made me
a photocopy. I’ve started worrying about getting
the proper transportation certificate
which requires the inspector’s signature,
which requires believing there is
an inspector with the authority to okay me.
There are moments when a dog will hear
what you cannot. The bark is a warning
at 92 decibels. Because you hear nothing
moving out there, fear is vague and continuous.
Quiet is a command that registers only 7 decibels when
spoken aloud. I read your note about the beauty
of the immune system and the mathematics of the brain.
How would you like me to interpret
this love letter? It weighs next to nothing
and ends abruptly. It’s true, the container
has great aesthetic value but I was really hoping
for a free watch with a rechargeable battery or
at least a better kind of nothingness.
IN EQUINOXThe idea was change, orat least rearrange our livesto fit inevitable weather—We bought fruitcamouflaged by bruise,froze stews, thought we could make dowith what was left of preserves.The idea was clemency, prepare,avoid our tendenciesto move too quickly, to pick pearsthat could stand to soften.We stashed all we couldof birch sleeves, bagged leaves,figuring we could always burnour britches, our ancestral tweeds.The idea was to make it new,at least attempt to make it througha season we both knew betterthan to bear.
DAY TRADERSMay is not the only month when stockbrokers emerge in large numbers from lakes and streams. The order Ephemeroptera, means "living a day" and some adult stockbrokers do not survive even that long—bursting from the water in the evening and dying before dawn. Most last a few days, but none are equipped to feed as an adult.To reproduce, thousands of male stockbrokers perform a kind of dance, flying up and down in great swarms. They seize females that enter the swarm and mate in flight. Eggs are laid within an hour, attached by short filaments to aquatic plants or other supports.Metamorphosis is simple. Interns, unlike adult stockbrokers, have biting mouth parts and can feed on tiny plants and small aquatic animals. They resemble the children of bank managers but have three, rather than the usual two, tail-like filaments, and gills on their abdomens rather than on the thorax and legs.
If you wanted to list the young poets who were likely to figure in many of our literary conversations over, say, the next decade, you could hardly do better than the names on this poster. And I'm happy to say two of them are ours. It's going to be a great reading. See you there?
