Part of TDR’s Behemoth Gargantuan Canadian Poetry in Review

[November 2008]

PASHA MALLA, JERAMY DODDS, MIKE SPRY, MARGARET CHRISTAKOS, ANGELA SZCZEPANIAK, JOE BLADES, MARCUS MCCANN

BOOTY CALL

My friend Steve
got this booty call the other day:
“You have a. Collect call. From:
Fuck me.”
After he accepted the charges
Steve said, “Hello?”
and the lady on the end of the line
said, “Laser?”
and Steve said, “Laser here,”
and things haven’t been
the same ever since.
Steve makes me call him
“Laser,” now, see,
mainly because after that night
he turned into a Laser.
You know the type:
one of those guys
who’ll take his shirt off at the park
and can throw a Frisbee
like a ventriloquist –
that is, into the distance,
and trickily.

Pasha Malla. All our grandfathers are ghosts. (Snare Books, 2008)

THE EPILEPTIC ACUPUNCTURIST

People that get their rocks off
in glass houses are the same people
who’d bend you over a rainbarrel
just to give you the wet t-shirts
off their backs. You can’t shoot
your mouth off if you’re out of earshot.
Let bylaws be bygones, don’t mind
your own business into the ground,
all that glitters is not cold to the touch.
You’re only human once. If you’ve taken
the American way down a one-way street
you’ve got to wipe your nose with the heart
on your sleeve. Don’t knock yourself up over it,
baby. When they kicked dirt in your eye
they didn’t think they’d be losing ground.
If your household name’s ruined by word
of mouth, take the gift horse to town for a night
it won’t soon forget. Colonel Sanders didn’t lick
his fingers to the bone just so you could go it alone.
If you get what I’m getting at, raise your red hand.
You’ve got to kiss a lot of ass to get a little behind
in this business. Playing your silver spoons
with a bedpan band is like going for broke
at a church bazaar, more need than bother, more
clutch than grasp. You’ve got to be half in the bag
all the way to the bank. The mind is a terrible thing
to keep chaste. If you can’t be drawn to my quarters
do I part the sea and split? I treat my objects like women,
but I’m as Oedipal as you are Eve. True, I’d drop
a latch-key kid off at an open-cast mine,
but you’re nothing to shake champagne at.
I think you’ll agree with me here, the lake’s
so clear you can see yourself to the door.

Jeramy Dodds. Crabwise to the Hounds (Coach House, 2008)

CHARITY

I worry about the trees I’ve killed with superfluous rhymes
and using the word soul without really knowing what it means.
Darling, you’re my soulmate, we’ve invested in soulfate,
we’re so deeply in soullove, like soulflowers and souldoves.

Last week I got a rejection letter from McSweeney’s.
It read: “The rainforests called; they said they’re depleting.”
It was a short story in which Jesus is resurrected
but nobody notices. He marries a girl from Thunder Bay,

opens a succesful Greek restaurant and they have three sons
who shun the responsibility of messiahdom and souvlaki.
Instead they have aspirations to play in the NHL,
save the youngest who wants to be a dancer.

Jesus disowns him out of fear that the child’s love
for jazz tap means he’s gay, which of course it does.

Mike Spry. JACK (Snare Books, 2008)

LOST (‘IMMORTAL’)

Living this long’s going worse than planned.
I get to the top of the mountain and discover
a bunch of dead ones, perfectly
preserved.
Their navels latched with opals.
Each opal a microchip speaker still issuing.
We’d left behind language so long ago –
I ached for my mother’s
hips and of course
her warm corneal voice. Through
airstreams so thin in
almost a swoon she
seemed to bulge toward my looking;
something whatever
was what she lip signalled
then a cold suchness got to my fingers.
What is and isn’t sophisticated thinking
unhitches every sense
from the body I use.
Fucking mountain.

Margaret Christakos. What Stirs (Coach House Books, 2008)

on exceeding flesh and bone limitations

Few of us are born into absolute physical suitability. It
doesn’t take much for us to see Miss Neighbour’s slender
ankles swanning toward her hem or Cousin Ethel’s delicate
hands clasped neatly in her lap, to be reminded of our
own shortcomings. Though nature may be cruel in her
distribution of pleasing attributes, it is a matter of etiquette
and good breeding that we take measures to manage her
missteps everywhere possible, regardless of our flesh and
bone limitations. These days, if a girl wants to maintain her
standing in polite circles she will begin by taking a good stern
look at her person in the mirror. If she is truly honest with
herself, it should take little effort to ascertain and catalogue
each of her flaws, and set to work straight away at mending
them. Often it is simply a matter of calling on the wisdom of
deportment. For instance, in the case of pedal enormity, one
need only select the appropriate shoe to complement the
monstrous extremity rather than follow the latest trend at the
cost of bodily decorum. How obvious this seems! Surely no
one would be so foolish as to commit such a blatant corporal
atrocity! If only this were true. Many a decent girl would
shrink at how often one can look at Miss Hostess’ clods
stuffed into the most fashionable dainty slippers fancying
herself the belle of her ball. Not to mention how many a fine
dinner party has been pummeled to ruin by the twittering
fool of a girl bent on tromping about with her great hooves
spilling out of an elegant Mary Jane. Scandalous. Rest
assured, there is no place for the slovenly-footed with any
topcrust coterie.

Angela Szczepaniak. Unisex Love poems (Punchy Poetry /DC Books, 2008)

casemate poems (reprise) 1

because i’m back in the casemate of public art
because there are always more stories to tell

because the dragon boats are not at rest today
because it’s a cool september morning saturday

because i said i would write new poems here
because caine left his painting easels

because liz left a $10.20 bag of carded wool
because my name is spelt jo on the sign out front

because i have a tech pen and steady eye-hand
because the knight of cups is often well-travelled

because this is on paper purchased in beograd
because this is in my travelling manual typewriter

because a bus tour of ontario seniors is here
because one of the men left & returned through pier 21

because his wife immigrated through pier 21
because they were married in scotland

because my mother immigrated through pier 21
because she was a child with her parents

because the knight is often poetic enthusiastic
because i can be a good friend bringing opportunities

casemate poems (reprise) 2

because i’ve written the first poem by 10:50 am
i now want to try the laptop for a wireless signal

it works i can blog and email from within
this artist residency casemate two ways to write

side by side could even try typing one hand
on each device and see just how bad i could write

the potential to make so many mistakes beyond
typos my hands not independent like playing

two pianos simultaneously (not that i do)
but there might still be fun in trying

liz’s needle felted head and shoulders and chest
ethereal wool trailing off for appendages

out of the “science wars"—a loaner book
to be returned when possible after the return

of maja and vlad from montréal mathematics
and the roots of postmoddern thought by tasic

the man from ontario did four years in wwII
now he takes a good digital camera photograph

bus tour guide doesn’t want his picture taken
but he will be part of the senior’s trip memories

Joe Blades. casemate poems (collected) (Chaudiere Books, Ottawa, 2008)

Bussing, a guest, visitation

Grifter is soon. Kinsey-counted digits,

slick skinned insert, picked the city's
provocative soccerer for visiting.

Curdled, terse outputs—floored outfits—

packed up: away, jersey. Gotta
ask Kesey to cost your proposal,

solve palsy with a blank-K grant.

Be sotted, risking silly for a slice
of exciting. Uneven breathing

wrestles the subtler bunsen
from upturned lungs, anxiety's upswing.

Forget we fought like toddlers. Pluck

up your cup of coddling, douse the
guesting ghost. This story's got legs.

Marcus McCann. Soft where (Chaudiere Books, 2009)