Sunday Poem

PLEASE DON'T BURY ME DOWN IN THAT COLD, COLD GROUND 

No, I'd rather have 'em cut me up / And pass me all around. —John Prine 

Use my tripe for dental floss;
Transgender women can have my tits.
Braise my ribs in honey-garlic sauce;
Burn my slick pits, zits, and clit. 

Use my temper to dispense with folks
Who always get stuck in your craw.
Daddy-dutch, don't you ditch my yolks—
The finest hollandaise you ever saw. 

Duck, duck, goose, get my liver to Quebec;
Chefs, it's almost foie gras.
Tartar my tongue, make a broth with my neck,
Then, baby, choke me down raw. 

Use my calluses to sand down your edges,
Use my butt to make some soap.
If you're hungry for change then dredge,
Batter, fry, and eat my cunt for hope. 

Puree my asshole into wieners;
You know people love that shit.
When the bread's broken, be Catholic keeners
And consecrate a whole vat of my spit. 

Salvage my piercings and store in a Ziploc bag,
Give them away to someone unsuspecting for free.
Wring out my favourite shorts for my guerrilla rag
And institute a bloody archive of mouldy me. 

Take my offbeat heart to the clock shop,
Throw 'em all off for years.
Tenderize my loins, shellac my chops,
Donate my funhouse mirrors to my queers. 

Feed my yeast to brew your beers
(At least something is still alive).
Rub my grease on a few good steers,
Remember rosemary, thyme, and chive. 

Grind my milk-bones for Titus Andronicus pie,
Serve with crumpets and a spot of pee.
Tan and treat my thick-skin hide;
Quill my blood to write your new treaty. 

Play your soundtrack on my vertebrae xylophone
(To hell with cell-phone style).
Ignite my gas before a zealot's home,
Extinguish it with my pool of black bile. 

My feet were made for more than walking;
Don't waste the years I spent on that gut.
Repurpose my chins as makeshift caulking
To seal this casket shut. 

                 But please don't bury me
                 Down in that cold, cold ground.
                 I'd rather have 'em cut me up.
                 And pass me all around.

By Lucas Crawford, from Sideshow Concessions (Invisible Publishing, 2015)

(Doll face by Freya Jobbins)

The Cloaca Has Landed

Andrew Hood was in Ottawa recently to launch his monstrously good second book of stories, The Cloaca, published by the very fresh and infectiously unpretentious Invisible Publishing. On a day that The Cloaca received some good critical attention from Phillip Marchand in National Post, Hood gave a short reading at Collected Works Bookstore and answered questions from the madding crowd.

Asked who he's reading, Hood mentioned Flannery O'Connor ('for the violence in her stories') and Amy Hempel. Asked if the stories in his second book were easier or harder to write than the bunch in Pardon Our Monsters, Hood confessed writing has got a lot harder to do, scratched his head, and said some things that cannot be printed here. Asked how he knows when he's finished with a story, Hood answered he knows he's done when he can't take anything more out of a story, without it falling apart. The folks at Véhicule Press wish the inimitable Hoodly all the readers he deserves and then some.