Yoko's Dogs: Four Collaborations

The Sphinx Moth’s Riddle

she’s never met the wife

yet knows the husband’s garden

today he thinks

his male nurse is a novelist

he rejected

Nabokov was also famous

as a lepidopterist

in the greenhouse

with a torch—

night-blooming cereus

the answer to the sphinx moth’s riddle is

not man

***

Li Po

in a boat, very tipsy

Li Po tries to kiss

the moon and drowns

not dead after all

a branch of the plum tree blossoms

***

Ukiyo-e

dusk —

ferns and cedar in the rockface

shading the railbed

a bit of chaff on the print

still damp from the woodblock

she serves rice

from the steam table

arm wrapped in a towel

the bowl's empty

Basho sleeps in a windowless room

***

Sturgeon Moon

the laundry out to dry

then in —

summer rain

the whole valley heard about

the ruckus in the henhouse

bear scat loaded with saskatoons

by Wolverine Creek

I’m not afraid

my cabin among laurel
deep in the forest

sturgeon moon —

my father wakes

in his recliner

alder leaves drying in shade

on the hot beach

my lunch an overripe peach

I take two plums

from a basket

they were so sweet

and so cold

"Ukio-e" and "Sturgeon Moon" are from Yoko's Dogs' 

first book, Whisk (Pedlar Press, 2013)

"The idea for Yoko's Dogs came about in 2006 around a small tin table in Montreal when the four of us, living in different places and time zones, got together and decided to explore collaboration as a way of expanding our individual practice. Over the first few months we wrote and revised, and wrote some more; read and studied and discussed the traditions of Japanese-style linked verse, all via email. We chose a system of composition and eventually decided that for readers the mechanics of this system should disappear, the way forms for moulded concrete are knocked away once the work is finished."  
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