Sunday Poem

LARISSA NEW YEAR'S 

If you were lucky, you said, by the end of the night
we would have the money for a holiday
on Evia or Alonissos, on Thassos
or Halkidiki—or we could even go to Crete.
All New Year's Eve you beat men at cards—
one by one they exited the game. 

I sat back at the bar and watched
and thought of the night we had met,
when you stated you foresaw deaths
then tried to forget—the neighbour, the relative,
the stray kitten you introduced to a mother
and her brood that hissed it away. 

And you told me you were a thief. I admitted
I, too, had stolen things—for a time—
but now to find metaphors was to pocket
new money. I wanted to steal a thing
from its class and marry it to an alien other.
You nodded at that—all contradiction, 

calculating, vicious in an instant,
yet frightened and soft-hearted
in a way you had to hide. People either died on you
or deserted you. But I had no choice—
I had to stay to see the constant startled look
in your green eyes, to see you perform 

your ritual behind half-closed kitchen door
with olive oil and floating flame
to keep away the evil eye, to see you dab
holy water on your throat in crazily driven taxis,
to see how you stood as at an interface
where gods and goddesses appeared. 

Nicotine addict, gambler, who thieved
everywhere, who also gave without thinking,
you foresaw nothing of the thief
who came for you yourself. Or did you?
Every holiday you took, you might have half-meant
to lose him in a lit street. That startled look, 

you sensing he had begun his work in you—
the way you somehow knew what cards
were in players' hands. What I knew was the cutting
of the New Year's Day cake going wrong,
the coin wrapped in waxed paper not to be had
by you or me that year—and then, not any year.

From The Hundred Lives (Quattro Books, 2015) by Russell Thornton

Living Essences

Russell Thornton elaborates on how becoming a father has helped keep his poetry grounded:

I think probably my being a parent has deepened and clarified for me what I felt when I started getting serious about poetry in my early or mid-20s—that authentic poetry accesses, illuminates, and enacts the elemental strata of what we call a human being. As time has gone on, I’ve realized the truth of the statement that there’s nothing new under the sun—even though poetry is presented as such at increasingly more frequent intervals in a kind of blind imitation of advertisement culture. The “new,” supposedly evident and necessary in the poems of the new millennium, for example, most often reminds me of new shoe styles or versions of iPhones. I find I can’t be truly interested in much writing that doesn’t call up and engage with what I believe to be abiding living essences; for me, parenthood is in the category of the essences.

Sunday Poem

THE MAN WHO SLEEPS IN CEMETERIES 

Refuse recyclable paper yard bags. Refuse gloves.
Collect yard trimmings the way you know how—
I’ll do likewise. My friend, don’t hurt your head.
Afternoons, slide down the avenue. At every intersection,
karate kick crosswalk buttons. Show up mornings
a very macho character, a little threatening. Show up
fawning, a little flirtatious. Talking religion, bitches.
Going on about your lady—in the mirror, lipsticked.

Gang boy in Colombia. Gang man. You left that life.
Yes, they found you in Miami. They killed your wife,
your two kids, they threw you off a balcony. Now lay
down your head. With strands of yourself off in the trees,
running quiet and clear in the quick creek water.

With your arms wrapped around surgical scars.
With your collection of scars. Miami to Vancouver? I think
I walked. Lay down your English. Por favor! Scowl
and explain to me in Spanish that you don’t speak
Spanish anymore. Or Portuguese. Or the Quebec French
that jumps out of you. Explain to me that North Vancouver
has the most beautiful cemetery you’ve ever slept in.
No landlords, no need to pull a knife. With the different
parts of your brain in the right places, explain it.

With your jumble of words, lay down your head.
With your jumble of words. With your single joint
per day and the pain gone out of your skull. Let
the sections of your head click into a proper machined fit.  

Yes, killed so many times, scattered in so many places,
you can’t say—say a loud Fuck you! in the direction
of your every past boss. Say it at your every Refugee Board
hearing, at your every income assistance interview.
Consult the cemetery’s visiting bear, coyote and deer.
Consult the community of the dead flowing in unison
beneath your head. Then make your many decisions
and rule the parts of your head. My friend, my co-worker,
here’s a coffee, a set of garden tools and plastic yard bag.
Come do your expert work. Whistle all day the songs
that came to you in the night through the cold clean dirt.

From Birds, Metals, Stones & Rain (2013) by Russell Thornton

(Illustration by Rik Reimert)