Two by Adam Dickinson

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HAIL

Hello from inside

the albatross

with a windproof lighter

and Japanese police tape.

Hello from staghorn

coral beds

waving at the beaked whale’s

mistake,

all six square metres

of fertiliser bags.

Hello from can-opened

delta gators,

taxidermied

with twenty-five grocery sacks

and a Halloween Hulk mask.

Hello from the zipped-up

leatherback

who shit bits of rope for a month.

Hello from bacteria

making their germinal way

to the poles in the pockets

of packing foam.

Hello from low-density

polyethylene dropstones

glacially tilled

by desiccated, bleach-boned camels.

Hello from six-pack rings

and chokeholds,

from breast milk

and cord blood,

from microfibres

rinsed through yoga pants

and polyester fleece,

biomagnifying predators

strafing the treatment plants.

Hello from acrylics

in G.I. Joe.

Hello from washed up

fishnet thigh highs

and frog suits

and egg cups

and sperm.

Hello.

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HALTER TOP (TRANSLATING TRANSLATING A POLYESTER)

Polyethylene terephthalate

Let the python plot the thorn.

Let the hornet paper the tree.

Let pollen apron the path to the pharaoh.

Neoprene phyla are really an alloy art.

The telltale pattern,

the protean trophy pelt.

Nylon antelope threaten the Tylenol people,

open the paternal peephole to the athlete panther

and her alternate entropy.

Her teeth apply to the planetary apathy.

They are polar, they are throttle,

the error apparent

to the hyperreal

apple.

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Adam Dickinson’s Kingdom, Phylum (Brick Books) was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. The Polymers (House of Anansi) will appear in 2013. He teaches at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario.