Samples:
The Children
Green and Golden (2.22)
Taiwan (4.12)
Dignity (2.37)
Disappearing (2.23)
Posthumously released
in September, John Lavery's Dignity is available
at cdjl@videotron.ca
johnlavery@myspace.com
John is the author of Very Good Butter, for which
he was nominated for the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction,
You, Kwaznievsky, You Piss Me Off and Sandra
Beck.
Short Stories
Yuri
and the King Crab
The
Man on the Stamp
RUFFIAN AND GEEK
she’s more convincing when she laughs than when she
smokes,
she’s less than kind to frozen chickens, in her jokes.
gunslinger shoulders, a candle-tester’s eyes,
and a downstairs piano-barman’s
hands.
and you, you seem to find the happiness you seek,
although she’s hardly one for heaven, much less dancing
cheek to cheek,
she’s more a sort of mix of ruffian and geek.
she watches out for weekly specials on champagne,
she’s more than fluent in the English of the rain.
there’s no noctambulance of streets she doesn’t
know,
she chairs the dark conspiracy
of trees.
and you, you seem to find the happiness you seek,
although she’s hardly one for heaven, much less dancing
cheek to cheek,
she’s more a sort of mix of ruffian and geek.
she’s more convincing when she waits than when she
laughs,
she sometimes speaks in code, though not in polygraphs.
her back’s as charmed as is a cobra’s when it’s
straight,
as charmed as is her commonplace
grace.
and you, you seem to find the happiness you seek,
although she’s hardly one for heaven, much less dancing
cheek to cheek
she’s . . .
the truth is people come and touch, but have to leave,
and leave a hole inside your head where very stupidly you
grieve,
a hole that’s better called their portrait, I believe.
. . . more a sort of ruffian and geek.
