Saturday Poem

THE FIST-PUPPET'S SOLILOQUY

You have to look past my felt-tipped eyes,
my lolling tongue drawn by the granddad
or uncle who has talked too long at lunch
and knows he must entertain the toddlers
with his jabbering, magic-markered fist.

I am the last item on your list, the puppet
that costs nothing to make: the bogeyman
couched between worn index and thumb,
my snarl converted to a hayseed's guffaw.

Admit that I bear traces of inbreeding,
that my face and body must always be
an abomination to children of any age,
that it twists me up inside to hear them

clamour for more of my troll's antics.
If you like hearing cracker bromides,
say that I also favour arenas, imperial
banquets involving human sacrifice,
oblations to the god of spewing lava.

Demand for me rises as I'm washed off
another hand in another suburban sink.
Others are waiting in need of laughter.
It is time I dusted off my Punchinello
and swam out into a little sea of faces

with my disfigurement at stage center:
winded, bleary-eyed, yet discovering
after each pratfall, a dropper's-worth
of the bile which keeps me going.

From Sympathy for the Couriers (2007) by Peter Richardson.

Saturday Poem

TROIS-PISTOLES

Parliament of seals
lounging on the stones
deep gurglings of ocean
cormorants roosting to dry
fly-catchers and wild cranberries
the sand-pipers of Trois-Pistoles
diving loons and yellowlegs
flights of ducks
skimming the waves
harvest of leeches
from under the stones
and the setting sun
spreading its sheets upon the sea
Saguenay of the banner and pennons
jagged Laurentians
and the house we called
La Renardiere home of departures
and of returns
mon vieux Marcel
please save me my hammock
on the second floor

From Evenings at Loose Ends (1991) by Gérald Godin, translated by Judith Cowan.

Saturday Poem

ALIEN

In the animal room at the museum
a brilliant green and white frog, immense,
from Argentina: an inverted bowl
with no legs, another incarnation of Buddha.

You have the skull of the previous one
in a small box: a treasure any boy
would envy. Five holes at the top
form a pattern like a sand dollar's.
I lift it and press it to my ear.
The jungle, not the ocean.

The brain case tiny, inversely related
to the size of the jaw.
Teeth like little razors,
a mouthful of suicides.

I held the skull up
to the frog's eye.
It blinked, once.
No detectable recognition,
or one so deep, amphibian
to amphibian, I couldn't sense it.
All these channels of communication,
invisible.

They are what we've lost
or never had.

The geckos are powder blue with rust
and tan markings: jewels, tattoos,
beauty marks.

Nothing human matches this kind of beauty.

They drifted here from outer space
or we did.
One of us is alien.

From The Fabulous Disguise of Ourselves (1986) by Jan Conn.

Saturday Poem

THE U-BOAT

I am floating by the wrecked U-boat,
naked as a dolphin in the August sun.
I've got away, again, from everyone.
I've moored my raft to the periscope
that stays underwater. On it I keep
my shorts and shoes, and Coca-Cola,
and a Bavarian girly magazine.
I've become so at-home in the ocean
that I think I must someday drown.
Miles away, on the edge of my hometown,
twin cooling towers fork the sky
where an airship phuts, selling beer.
No one knows the U-boat is there –
no boats approach these rocks,
no swimmers advance. I don't advertise.
I dive to the conning-tower and enter.
Bubbles speed behind me, above me,
but I am fast. I slide past my friend
the skeleton, until my breath runs low,
then I hit the surface he saw long ago,
but never quite saw in the end.

From A Picnic on Ice: Selected Poems (2002) by Matthew Sweeney.

Saturday Poem

MORMON

How will a Mormon boy get a wife, I wondered,
if he declines his mission to wander the world,
spreading the Mormon word as he goes:
no wife for a Mormon boy who refuses.

So I was kind to two young Mormon men
who came to my door last Saturday morning—
the point man in short sleeved shirt and blue tie,
his back-up in short sleeved shirt and blue tie—

the former displaying a pulp magazine
which featured a story on the fashion industry
and its dangers, especially to young women:
anorexia, bulimia, and low self esteem.

I listened until—as if at some prearranged signal—
the second flipped open a leather-bound book
he had held until then with a sloth-like grip:
It was my cue to say: I am not a Christian.

This has been true of my life for so long
that to say it out loud gives only a moderate high,
which in turn brings only a moderate low.
And so I did not take it too badly on coming back in

to hear my eight year old daughter say,
in her deepest voice: I am not a Christian;
though to hear her say it brought it home in a new way,
and I thought for a moment that this is serious

and that she should take it more seriously,
so I considered putting the fear into her, telling her
that if her grandfather heard her say such a thing
he would think us condemned to eternal damnation.

Instead I sat back down on the couch beside her
where it so happened there was scheduled
an end-of-season Fashion File—the year's best show,
the year's best designer, the year's best newcomer.

And watching, I reserved my loudest cheers
for headdresses of ostrich and emu feathers,
for models with bleached invisible eyebrows,
for models with slack, stew-bone thighs.

While she preferred the more womanly models--
though she did not care for naked breasts--
and reserved her loudest cheers for young Mark Jacobs
and for the ready to wear from Donna Karan.

What a world this is for a Mormon boy, I thought,
who declines his mission to wander the world,
spreading the Mormon word as he goes:
what a world for a Mormon boy who refuses.

From There, There (2005) by Patrick Warner

Saturday Poem

JUST IRENA

You died at the muddy end
of a rutted drive
near a mill pond—
thirsty,

and you died unkempt
as your blueberry patch
where I used to kneel,
eating my fill.

You died
perfumed with cat piss
and mouldy hay,

without a man
to hitch up a plow
or pick up a hammer.

The wind
undid your shingles
one by one
undressing you,

and the roof
came down
around you,

and you died
with crows in your hair
and rain in your mouth
and wind in the chimney.

Fires went out
windows broke
and mice even now
eat the straw in your cot.

From Rue Saint Famille (1990) by Charlotte Hussey.

Saturday Poem

“…all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusky death.”
(Macbeth)

“Fools” is a little harsh, but
he knew to avoid sentimentality—
try substituting for it
and you’ll see why it’s there.
I sit on my sofa and watch,
through the back window,
the new red leaves of the Japanese maple
stir in a breeze so slight it would be
imperceptible without them.
To be eighty is also a little harsh.
I salute the red leaves and am
glad that I continue to distinguish
their small motions, although
I understand that neither they nor I
have lasting guarantees. Other leaves
with their impromptu ripplings
are on the way and
my semblable walks spryly
nearby, casting his eye about him
for where he’ll live next:
it’s a nice neighbourhood,
the young family who just moved in
next door will have a settled look
by then, and standing in their driveway
they will explain to him
the street’s idiosyncracies.
The word "plangency" has tempted me
more than once but I’ve resisted it.
These lines may always have been
its long-term goal.

From Where We Might Have Been (2010) by Don Coles

Saturday Poem

UTOPIA

Need a hero? Dozens on the street
are underemployed and easily pass
for men unwilling to live without freedom.
We usually pick the one with the best ass.

Faces are becoming less important,
reminding us as they shouldn’t of souls
we can’t reproduce, therefore don’t brand.
Capitalism’s last stage is to lower

subjects into a template, a sandbox.
Recreation is the great equalizer.
Those who won’t play are played with—progress
has made even martyrdom banal,

and I am forced to look on in triumph
as folks who believe something, anything,
are experimented on, not for science,
but to exhaust our curiosity.

From The Empire's Missing Links (2008) by Walid Bitar.

Saturday Poem

SONG OF THE NORTH AMERICAN LAWN

I must learn from sidewalk cement.
Be a little less impressed
by every passing footprint.
Stand tall. Spring forth.
After all, I win every Mexican
standoff with the sky—
the sun backing down,
the moon clearly phased,
half the man I am when mown.
Stars are always first
to blink, and clouds sweating
over me make my thirst
their priority. Even the tallest trees,
looming above, trail off
when it’s foggy,
and the signs of local parties
driven into my chest
can’t kill me.
The heart, bypassing politics,
opens new paths
like an anthill healing.

From Pure Product (2009) by Jason Guriel

Saturday Poem

TÊTE-À-TÊTE

The hog
invited me to dinner.

I didn't mind the bristles
on his chinny-chin-chin.

And the truffles by candlelight
were a definite hit. I hadn't

known the porcine heart
was so similar to my own.

Is it true, I asked, that you eat your own kind?
(I had witnessed it with my own eyes,

but wanted to hear him answer.) His wet
snout trembled over the china rims, pink

and blind. You must think I am a monster!
And dabbed a tear with scented linen.

When he did not come back to bed that night
I knew something was wrong.

Tiptoeing down the cold halls I found
an empty room where his body hung

from a hook, like a gorged tick. How
he had climbed up there, and cut his own throat

I do not know. But the blood fell at my feet
like roses.

From Penny Dreadful (2009) by Shannon Stewart.

Saturday Poem

THE SHIP AS NAVIGATOR

five boards from a pine
precede
and outlast me

I have lived
with my elbows on this table

and pots and pans
and papers

idiot life! sun and moon
wars, computers
mini-skirts, long skirts, knee-length
--holy jeans

and lilies, day and species
nights
with last Scotch

my raft amid the galaxies, themselves
fleeing like refugees

winters of Saint-Denys Garneau
blizzards
from all sides, some
appleblossom

night turns
on this coordinate

a kitchen chair, some cracked
refurbished boards

From The Stream Exposed with All its Stones: Collected Poems (2010) by D.G. Jones

Saturday Poem

THE STAMMERER’S SOLILOQUY

There are times I can’t even understand
myself for this damn stammering.
It is only here in this tarred shack
I can say something straight out
like I hear in my head.
This dog listens–right, boy–after all
we gnaw on the same fucking bone.
My neighbour, what does he know
for all his learning?
I’ll not stutter my courtesy,
blurt it out for his sake today.
I’ll step where I please.

Damn that bitch of his,
always at my heels,
why can’t he keep it tied?
Can’t I walk the ground without that?
I’ll keep my complaint to myself,
silence serve best, as they say.
Then, God, I’ll have enough of it–
it can’t come too soon.

From Animals of My Own Kind (2009) by Harry Thurston.

Saturday Poem

Night Shift

The owl skirrs for mouse
and in his gut, he turns her
inside-out. The bat weaves

through the criss-cross trees,
wings upon her sonar pings
to trap the bug and feel him sing.

Owl, wise anatomist, studies
the tissues, then spits the gist:
the shag and bone of what exists.

And bat, dread acrobat, flips
the forest upside-down, and all
the creatures underground,

the shrew, the hedgehog and the mole
fall out like rattled soldiers
from their tunnelled holes.

From Skullduggery, by Asa Boxer, which will be launched April 17.