Coltrane Olé by Andrew Burke

Today I'm on housework duty.

As I run the washing-up water

I take the CD player from the study

and place it by the sink. My

favourite Coltrane session is ready,

I press 'play' and wash. Steam

rises, each bubble a rainbow dome. Olé!

I place the last cup on the rack to dry.

Off to make beds. I unplug

Coltrane, take him down the hall

to the bedroom. Plug in, play on.

Olé! I'll make these beds my way!

What now? The path? It's fresh air

for you today, my main man.. Extended

chord, all puns intended, out the window

and sit in a chair. There: play.

I sweep away night's blues. Olé!

The postman pays no-never-mind, more bills

drop into our box. Oshit! I

approach with care: first envelope

delivers a publisher's cheque. Olé!

I dance. My neighbour waves

cautiously as he drives by.

ANDREW BURKE is an Australian poet with ten collections to his credit, an e-novel on the internet, and a bunch of plays and tiny films in the early 70s. His work is said to have a 'lyric voice and a ruthless eye'. His latest collection is Undercover of Lightness: New & Selected Poems (2012, Walleah Press; Hobart), available from http://walleahpress.com.au/garradunga/?tcp_product=undercover-of-lightness-new-and-selected-poems-by-andrew-burke

decline of regret by Lainna Lane El Jabi

decline of regret
(from pilot sightings)
We have no words for love except the soft tissues of the heart metronomic deep in the cage -Adrienne Rich


Ferality
names of endearment] they lisp inside my mouth

my cursive fingers sound cloudy
teeth punctuating the air barbs, hook [i thought i saw
an endangered language shuddering on pine bark
& tufts of fur caught in splinters



i learned to breathe outline of maps

& the gutters where tight stitching intended ravines

I saw the lines on the back of your slim hands & thought [

a writer’s skin is very old.

perky ungloved, oil plume scarlet polish a month of cuticle moons
scripting places we sophist a starling rivulet you sharp
over the hello of lyric

which is to say desire or possibly erotic



it was messy in your basement apartment, sunless

the professors who lived upstairs would
evening wash your dishes of you said maternal instinct
but Adrienne Rich never said metric she said ][

outside in a naked trench swooping away
empty can of Guinness, the rattling tin braille



i don't remember most hotel rooms
just the toiletries & fists banging doors
dreams of moist mollusks & ice machine chrome swirl
i get poets w their language-locked lips confused
trace
the sugar maps, bees
envious of this deep memory embossed tufts of pollen

golden rum rimmed tongue glint fuck-thick nights 

apex of bones severely livid in swerving weave

blurry belly press on pocked foam

raked by rolling headlights
a clot of arms & legs, what veins are blue

oxygen rich, or is it the lack?

Practical Applications for Poetry

1. the philosophy of the lungs

punctuated, slow long narratives]

2. to learn a body    simple arc flesh nerves     & it is late & i am hungry.

3. it is late & i am hungry.

4. delving loamy line between a marriage & the backs of your knees will quake.
5. to remember snowing in late september all those years.
6. shopping the prophet of mistakes.
7. eclipse my finger star & moon heat as far away as ash, now is not a goodtime.
8. monotony is what lasts one of two cats; legal paper; ice wine halo; cherry pitted.

leaving this city rubbing out sighs erasing

puncture stains     my mouth a four year stitch
lashing apple skins a curled nest
unspooled in the vacant seat w yesterday hair
everything eventually will arrive
its conclusions     i lose my good watch
my feet are naked through february, march
magentic north positions us
straddling over godhead 
secretions on radio wheel [empty air
i catch your eyes tugging my neckline [i forgot to breathe

Lainna Lane El Jabi has lived in Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto where she completed a Master’s degree in Literature. Her research interests include experimental feminist poetries, Goldrush narratives, and small presses. She has published poetry in a scattering of journals and is a long standing editorial board member of the Olive Reading Series in Edmonton where she organized and participated in numerous literary events. Lainna Lane now works at the University of British Columbia in the beautiful Okanagan valley, preparing to pursue her MFA in Creative Writing while surrounded by unlimited wine tasting opportunities.

The Invocation of the Second Person by Jeff Carpenter

The Invocation of the Second Person: An Archæological Report

Middleman B knowing he would know the slow gouge into Great Lakes &c. whiles the Ice Age afoot. Signs of life archive H2O pentimento Middleman B’s glacial walks.

Like a riddle intermedia: here the telltale script of a sidewinder; here the gooney dance steps of a harrier robbing the scribe to elide his buxom cursive; here the discrete pulse of a biped; here a ghost; here a reader.

He can see the future through spates of cold & warm coordinate skin & hair & hands & teeth for shedding, once & future winters without snakes, brackish syntax meet parsed lifespan, handspan, attention span all of a sudden a dread of ¶ilcrows taking over, &c.

Middleman B has not seen another mammal in about ten thousand years: called him grandson & watched him suicide off new mountain in the jagged dusk; grandfathered him again; his Ice Age fraternized with Nextman Ago enough to second guess his own phylogeny.

His walking conveys fractal-seven shivers up the tumid length of Nova Scotia, to total in the tittle of Cape Breton as hungry as food his spit sediments the ocean. His drumming up a whole nother footfallen grammar sky to breathe its feathery compass.

Hawk mar snow still in cloud cast thermalling shadow to the surface of the sun. Thirsty circle mimic random walk. Word guilty of water & vice versa. Still still. Flock to an economy of prey.

Jealously, innocent, resolute, abides Middleman B’s dream of a whom nother. Much as he would like to be her, while her warmth in early poetry, she is so little compared to Middleman B (there she is cosy in his navel; he could put her to his eye like a soft contact lens), a better size for another, a not her.

Like the ice, Middleman B is receding, ablating, somedays just sublimating into air, water, dust, silt, &c. So is sense while understanding. So he is not sad or angry.

Language is a sleight of longevity. Your words will rue your words. Your words will squander you in enumerating Middleman B’s walk. There is the dream beside you, a not her, all over, a gain*. Why do you harry desire when its source is both with you & you.

You are here, like a riddle. Both here & on the far side of the world, refracted. Both of you. A shadow & its die.


* [Footnote missing.]

Jeff Carpenter lives and writes in Edmonton, Alberta. In addition to a growing number of juvenilia and ephemera, he is author of malachi on foot (Red Nettle Press, 2008); and, with glenN robsoN, as the sound poetry duo Tonguebath, he authored and performed Dun John & Dr Agon (Extra Virgin Press, 2010). He enjoys collaborating with poets, dancers, and musicians to create rich multimedia performances. “Invocation of the Second Person” is a random encounter from the “choose-your-own” type poem, booklung (unpublished), written with the financial support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Carpenter is acting Acting Director of the Alberta Research Group (ARG), an award-winning ”pataphysical think tank.

Two by Nancy Mattson

SUNDAY MORNING IN BERGAMO WITH DAMON 

His great-uncle told him of soldiers

picked off as they crept from trenches,

cut down as they ran in the wrong

uniforms clotted with mud.

The old fellow’s gone a year, left him

flat and chattels. Some garden.

Unshaven at 11, Damon squints

at his narrow patch of land;

and beyond, at a field of quonset huts,

their skeletons draped in polythene

to shelter beds for pea shoots,

tomatoes in blossom, soft fruits.

Damon’s bride is lying in, lying in

bed while he’s pulling, pulling at

the fraying cord of a rotary mower. 

Hark how the mower Damon sung,

With love of Juliana stung!

Partings in long grass suggest a path:

he uncovers worn bricks for Juliana’s

touchable feet. His toes in sandals

do damn stub into buried tufa stones.

Those ragged cones of firs lack point,

want his clippers. Where’s a ladder.

That maddening church. Its electronic carillon

pummels a hymn into his left temple,

loops back to hells bells let me sow your love,

something something hatred; turn it off.

While everything did seem to paint

The scene more fit for his complaint.

Hark how the mower hacks ivy

from a grotto that stops at his hip,

kneels to rescue a red lamp,

guttered candle in its bowl.

Unrottable grey roses plug the mouth

of a cracked maiolica vase. Letters on its base –

‘To Juliana’ – hit his gut.  Spit in tissue

dabs away loam caked on a virgin’s face.

He stands her upright in the grotto,

its roots deeper than any alp,

far too heavy to haul away.

Let Juliana mock. Let it stay.

A BUSHEL AND A PECK AND A HUG AROUND THE NECK 

A small black case

lined in orange velvet

packets of strings

in permanent curls

plectrums as soft

as babies’ nails

a chrome yellow bakelite box

three fingers wide

her ‘pyramid pitch pipe

for violin and mandolin’

her lip prints

on these whistle pipes

each as long as my thumb

each with an old reed

I need to wet

with new spit

and the notes sound like this

from wren to bear:

E e

A e e e

D e e e e e e

G e e e e e e e e e

her fingerprints

on this mandolin

a red ribbon round

its neck to hang it

I no longer squirm

to call this ribbon scarlet

for all those songs

that stuck in my craw before

her arm and leg went stone

her voice monotone

 Nancy Mattson moved from Edmonton, Alberta, to London, England in 1990. Her third full length collection is Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press 2012). Her first, Maria Breaks Her Silence (Coteau Books 1989) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award and her second is Writing with Mercury (Flambard Press 2006). She co-organizes the popular Reading in the Crypt series at St Mary Islington in north London.

Excerpts from an Untitled and Unfinished Poem by Michael Penny

             #187

My work begins 

when the day begins

and I take a dawn breath;

things happen and pass

and twilight comes

and the day and I exhale. 

            #188

Someone has laid out the pieces--

rock, tree, air, and water--

randomly on my work table.

To the side, there’s instructions

on how to make a landscape

written in a language I do not know.  

     

             #189

In the quiet places

trees go about their business

under the casual supervision of birds,

and on these islands

not all surrounded by water

I find myself. 

Michael Penny’s most recent book, Particles, was shortlisted for the Stephansson Award. He divides his time between Edmonton and Bowen Island.

The Bread Truck by Erin Moure

The Bread Truck

—I was just remembering something, you know.

—Remembering?

—The bread truck.

—What’s that supposed to mean?

—A truck with bread in it. Full of bread.

—I don’t know why you’re bringing that up.

—Because it’s one of those things I remember, you know. It’s hard to say why. No, I can’t.

—A bread truck.

—The bread truck.

—What’s that supposed to mean?

—Nothing! It doesn’t mean anything! It’s a truck, that’s all. A truck in my head. I remember it. We stood on the sidewalk. Full of metal racks of bread.

29 Sept 2012

Montreal poet Erín Moure has published seventeen books of poetry plus a volume of essays, My Beloved Wager. She is also a translator from French, Spanish, Galician (galego), and Portuguese, with twelve books translated, of work by poets as diverse as Nicole Brossard, Andrés Ajens, Louise Dupré, Rosalía de Castro, Chus Pato and Fernando Pessoa. Her work has received the Governor General's Award, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the A.M. Klein Prize (twice), and was a three-time finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Moure holds an honorary doctorate from Brandon University. Her latest works are The Unmemntioable (House of Anansi), a long poem investigating subjectivity and wartime experience in western Ukraine and the South Peace region of Alberta, and Secession (Zat-So), her fourth translation of internationally acclaimed Galician poet Chus Pato. 

Two by Adam Dickinson

-->

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.

-->

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.

-->

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.

Two by Andy Weaver

THIS M   

möbius

  nooses

   ouroboric

 passageways

   quote

    ratiocination’s

     stealing

      thoughts

 unquote

      verbal

           wisdom’s

              xograph

           yelloched

           zestily

         across

          brain

           candy

              doughnutting

                      eight

                      figures

                 governing

hullabaloo’s

                       infinite

                             jest

                      kickbacked

                           like

                         möbius

This simple

And now let us turn, at last, to simple speech.

Simply, we turn to speech, and it lets us.

To speak, simply turn and let us at last begin.

Let us begin to speak, turning simply now over and over.

Speech, over and over, simply turning us away now.

Now, simply, over and over, turns us away. To speak of this. At last.

Bio: Andy Weaver has published two books of poetry, were the bees (2005) and
gangson (2011). He teaches contemporary poetry and poetics at York University.

semi-s by Nicole Markotić

semi-s

a pocket’s never steep enough

the line’s never pared enough

won’t they stop copping disneyglobe, not even for 15 minutes of every hour?

a tendon’s as kindhearted as a flatscreen, if your knee’s bendable

witness and pie-maker

think ancient texts, think generational trophies

clawing through the pages with beneficial wounds

because his battery broke the picnic before the lawn mower

passion fruit: 10 for $4

think that

a short survey cruises the landlines

two boy scouts never dunk enough

only a dentist might shortsheet a dentist

yawn

the water that streams

oceans that line

the juice of a wrinkled Casaba expects

exactly how many times do you repeat the punchline?

depressed birds see psychiatrists, even when this cartoon’s made in Germany

blackmail and blankets:

finger-food for the fervent

enough backtracking, let’s get backing!

which bestseller seeps through? con or pro?

usefully yours,

the foliage that exfoliates

been turning and turning, since turning away

put your hamstring where your plea-bargain is

your knuckle through the yuck-yuck intercourse

to ascend to Toronto: turn left

Nicole Markotić is a novelist and poet, whose latest book is Bent at the Spine (BookThug). She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Windsor and is currently trying to, you know, write...

touché by Dennis Cooley

          touché

she touched him some

where on the shoulder

she put him to the touch

& even though he feared

she wld think of him as an easy touch

wondered if she herself would

be a touch off might sooner

or later touch a nerve

he was touched by what she did

& said & felt even

though he had

almost lost touch with

reality his sense

                                  of touch he swore

he never touched the stuff   /never

but she had the touch all right even when she was

getting touchy he felt she cld teach him a thing

or two she had the royal touch

it was the right touch he felt he had never

felt this way before how cld he know how

she was feeling he was rather grouchy & she cld always

put her finger on it it was a touching moment

it was enuff & wld suffice

it brought a touch of blood

to his cheeks she touched him off

though once she had said

this was when first

someone had put them in touch

she would never touch him

with a ten-foot pole

close enough he had said

had he touched a sore spot

it was then he touched home

         base it has a bearing

this touches on big issues he thot

she could touch up the worst moments

talk about quality nothing but

nothing touched her for firmness

she touched hm up for a while

as a matter of fact she touched him

up for quite a bit he felt well

           touched by her some

how he felt she had a soft spot

for him she thot she could touch up his man

ners she came right out & said she up & said she felt

             he had it coming

& all the time he was thinking

she was a bit touched she was pretty

touchy & he was out

of touch with things

in way over his head

swore he never touched it

how much he would like to touch

her there it was

a touching moment

he had a touch of fever

found himself wishing

for a touch more

he liked her touch    so much    he him

            self was getting a bit

touchy especially when she applied

the finishing touches he favoured

she could see he really was touched

i guess we all were

                           a little

touched in those days

she had a touch for those things

he carried a torch for her

touch in truth he grew

attached to her

touch it was touch

& go then he was

hoping they would keep

in touch hoping no matter

what they would keep

in touch s/he would never lose

                            the touch

he was truly touched

dennis cooley grew up in Saskatchewan, studied at the University of Saskatchewan and then at the University of Rochester in New York state. His publications include Fielding, Bloody Jack, this only home, seeing red, and country music. A new title, abecedarium, is forthcoming from the University of Alberta Press.