JANUARY POETRY

  two poems
     Kate Hargreaves


Rhino

 Blood
 Mucus
 A piece of skin the size of a quarter and the shape of Texas
 A clot (swallowed)
 A pineapple
35 plastic army men
A pantsuit
A birthday card
Culture Club
A carrot
Several ladybugs
A jar of sauerkraut
Stitches
A painter’s canvas
Waffles
Plastic tubing
A block of cheese
2 5lb weights (one from each nostril)
Spanx
A rolled up newspaper from 2016
6 popcorn kernels
part of an optical nerve
3 baby teeth
 my frontal lobe
 a live panther
a Christmas wreath
a box of tissues
a pot of gold




     Taco Baby

     Taco Baby chews the pits from avocadoes.
     Refries string beans on the hot sidewalk.
     Burns her feet.
     Squirms when the shopping cart collector
     rattles by says I just want to eat
     you all up pinches her blotchy pink
     wrist before snagging
     another quarter from the return slot.
     Taco Baby’s too round to run
     Cracks a cream soda sniffles
     on the curbside and thumbs the flyer
     for a better sale on probiotics.







Kate Hargreaves  | Windsor  ON |  2016

JANUARY POETRY

TWO POEMS   

      Frances Boyle

     Shock

     I am liquid and slippery shiny

     mercury in my blood

     I can’t stay in one form

     for long.  Light refracts me

     bends me, spoon in drinking

     glass.  I shed that shape, shift

     on broken bedsprings,

     Charge and recharge from

     the circuit; clear the way

     for the next

     brilliant

                 shock.

Curiosity’s Gift

I.

Scarcity and all that service,

his able friend.

Your attraction made an inclination dewy

light damns bad heartcourse

each point intent and fixed,

strange bursts.

Forever lake on paper. 

Begged or coveted,

sorrow dallies.  Possess curiosity’s gift:

a broad three-bladed snake. 

Form images distorted

claws and paws, face

with feathers fitted. 

Trace a join, hard found. 

Hate, the absent thought,

mines the hill   Feast rover

slake silver woods to prayers,

made with her own hands. 

A mother inward demons

receive with awe.  The visit fresh,

look -- delight sighs, refuses no gain.

II.

Dark

at table every object

used to map a moment:

pointed

bent

fixed.

Canoe of Japanese snake claws,

paws of beast and bird

awful trace joined and polished.

She discovers a demand,

figure imaged in ivory

her own hands

pass forward

sorrow for days,

bring fearsome curiosity

again.

Frances Boyle | Ottawa |  2016

JANUARY POETRY

Dream father

Ellie Hastings

In my nightmare my father

is holding me

down. I am stuck

for air, he is spitting in my face.

I don’t know what

I did – broke a cup,

forgot to vacuum,

fell asleep

in the wrong place.

You wake me

from my fit

and I am unhinged

by my illusion. I know

this is really a memory, but

you are holding me together

in your arms

and I know I have returned

to safety. I know I can sleep again.

In the morning

when you ask me what happened

in my dream,

I don’t want to tell you.

I know you will imagine your kindness

as hurt. You will turn your love

into a monster. You will think

your hold is the same

as the nightmare’s. And I am afraid

that you won’t believe

your love is saving.

Ellie Hastings | Windsor |  2016

JANUARY POETRY

Land & Tittle    Christopher McCarthy

When I read a poem  – or hear it being read –

I  imagine  it   was written   as close to me as 

she is  &   listen  to   each   word   land  

your words land  pretty,  close,  &   so much so

I imagine  the  poem   is a postcard  to me

solid, speaking well, from some sunny place:  silent

when  so many small words   lie so close together

tiny spaces  in between  are  even,  more,  important

the little square for the stamp: silent’s reserved parking space

your correspondence  poems - our sending columns of words

which gain meaning & expression from the quiet  pauses, waiting

           

            late  &  human

so many  of  your poems  land  pretty  close  

I can hear how tittle  is  title no longer:

          superscript spot – small distinguishing mark, diacritic

          dot on lowercase i or j –integral, part glyph

you remind me of Fr. Patrick, the priest,

who wrote ‘Ponc’, which is the point, dot,

& tittle, it begins:

            ponc mé – I point, I dot, I tittle

            but I leave in a gap after me

we correspond like that small distinguishing,

marking the dot over top of the i,

 the space after it, not one t–too much:

             

               cut i’s head off,

go to l

kick away j’s

soccer ball

tittle  sounds too much  like  diddle, & ‘Ponc’

sounds more like  punk  or worse, 

spunk

but there are too many poets, writing poems

to spoiled, aging priests, defrocked & hopeless

no, not that:

                 cut i’s head off,

three i’s grow up in its place

kick away j’s

soccer ball

pass it back   

               start a game

Christopher McCarthy | Toronto | 2015-2016

JANUARY POETRY

     

     never a how or why

           by Pearl Pirie

        Rumi said, The china doll in us, at some point, will no longer break. 

        presumably, we will be powder for the horn to make magical healing,

        placebo dust for every which wind-up. because us being crushed

        will make everything all better, yeh? were Rumi’s shoulders the first 

        to load that hooey brick, or some well-intentioned translator? 

        monologues ignore their audiences. do you feel ignored? sit, have a tea.

        I’m thinking of you and trying to be risqué . I suspect you of making

        sow-ear purses by night from all those pigs your parents killed

        and blamed you for. because children’s tears look like a satire

        of parent’s own grief and by cutting themselves thru you, release.

        within all the pain that they called virtue, you learned well 

        the language of the crib. and because you walked with it, think  

        it’s good company. nobody really cares so go ahead, entertain 

        yourself. but ask nothing of me. Noguchi or Pound. which are you? 

        a what-knot of knowledge: this book is copiously researched. up for it?

        Pearl Pirie | Ottawa  ON | 2016

JANUARY POETRY

You There

      by Tom Dilworth

I am putting you into this poem

and keeping you here.

You dislike constraint,

but how different is this from being

in your body? in the world?

Obviously it’s not enough for you

to be here as a pronoun.

So take your pick of an image in a metaphor:

A stick of chewing gum, a snowflake, a sliver of light,

A piece of gravel?

pond-scum?

a bridge?

One of these please.

A bridge then—Boethius, too, liked that one.

But which? Brooklyn Bridge,

is already famously taken.

How about the Mackinaw Bridge, immense

and beautiful?

We feel you sway, the wind pulling us into itself

for delivery to distant whitecaps.

We cling to you, O Mackinaw Bridge,
especially those who panic halfway across.

Others traverse and vanish. The waters below

pass from Superior and Michigan into Huron, Erie, Ontario,

the St. Lawrence and the sea,
but you remain

like landscape.

This poem is your strait.

Or be a peach, sexy, delectable,

a juicy Angelus, hot with sun

but virginal, still on the branch,

softening, sweetening, just for me I’d like to think

but  know better.

This poem is your tree.

Or a bullet fired from preverbal casing

into the warm body of these words.

As they cool, a plump young forensics expert

digs towards you unsuccessfully

because you transform

into a diamond at the bottom of a mine shaft

which collapses—kaboof—

burying you forever,

deprived of air and light,

unaware of ever having been lead or human,

impervious to the forensics expert’s corpse
above and oozing.

You dislike blood.

I knew you’d be hard to please.

A bee, then,

furry, humming, heavy with pollen,

dreaming of honey and the queen,

remembering the way to daisy fields

ready to dance directions. This poem

is your hive.

Welcome home,

bumping and rubbing the others.

Or try a word of some distinction:

indefatigable? delirious?

Not biliousness. And not duress,
since you can’t be here under yourself.

How about impervious from nineteen lines ago?

No. Then thong?

What’s wrong with thong?

Ok, so no one’s going to wear you between butt cheeks.

If you were a thong you wouldn’t mind

but I guess you’re not.

Consider prepositions.

Some have class.

I recommend thence or whence,

forgetting here and now.

No,

because you want to be noticed.

Yes you do.

This is no place for false modesty.

Rambunctious? No, too Roman.

Ululation, then? that lovely barbarian

always on the losing side.

Of course not, what was I thinking?

No single word fits,

not even your name.

How about a simile? like puddle-glimmer of gasoline,

brighter than the pond-scum you declined.

Or like the hot surprise when you first touch dry ice,

like sunrise over snow,

like chewing foil that wrapped the gum you wouldn’t become

            in line ten (how soon they forget),

like a typhoon tightening shrouds between top tree and futtock

Ok, forget that, you who won’t be a thong.

Or like the butterfly kiss of a lover’s eyelash on your lower lip,

 but then it couldn’t be your lip, could it?

I guess you are like nothing else.

A nuance would suit, but how do I manage that

for someone so enigmatic.

Let this poem be your composite innuendo,

the opaque envelope of your mystery, implying

but not revealing the truth and goodness at the heart of you,

and hinting (I think I can manage a hint) at your longing

for the beauty that you lack.

‘Like this poem,’ you’re thinking,

or its writer. (Have we met?)

Let this, then, be me forgiving you,

and pardon by all you ever knew, for everything.

Let this be the verse where you deposit guilt
when you go (as you will)

Oh, but you’ve left that verse,

                                          a missed opportunity.

Ok, then when you go from this stanza,

put guilt aside,

shove it into this gap        

 brimming with molten lava

—there, it’s no longer yours and now no longer itself.

How does it feel to be innocent again?

                              You never were?

For the first time, then!
Even better.

And to think I had to drag you into this.

And now
just for you, a house with high ceilings

and many windows,

a view of green fields full of wildflowers

(where your bee hummed),
fields alive with unmetaphorical butterflies,

commas, say,

extending to hills and virgin forest

      (all virginity in this poem

      is metaphorical)

where you can roam or run,

young again, with a sweetheart,

gorgeous, witty, cheerful, kind,

just your type.

                 

And above, a blue sky with Simpson-puffy clouds

where you can fly. Yes, try,

extend your arms, lean forward,

                                                      There—

                                                                  you’re off.

Soaring,

               in serenity interrupted only

                                                      by bubblings of joy.

See, this isn’t such a bad poem to be in.

I know,

I know, you want your liberty,

but how free were you ever?

sovereign mostly over attitudes.

So choose one and don’t complain.

unless that’s your choice.

All right,

I’ll tell you what,

when you wish to stay, then

you’re free to go.

     

Tom Dilworth | Windsor  ON | 2016