Tuesday, March 06, 2018

Tuesday poem #257 : Simina Banu : A poem, exasperated, speaks candidly to its poet:



a transcreation of Mihai Eminescu’s “Criticilor mei”

Many flowers are in this poutine.
Though few bear fruit, all knock
at the gate of life
from within this death-shake (50% off).

I know:

It is easy to write nothing.
It is easy to write nothing.
It is easy to write nothing.
It is easy to write nothing.

But your heart is troubling.
Wishes, troubling. Passions, also troubling.
Your mind (troubling) listens
to them

like similes at the gate of life, extended
metaphors at the doors of thinking,
all wanting to break

into the world.

Yet here

you’ve drowned
me in the gravy.
You misread twenty-four entire books

as “sleep.”
Ah! The sky falls on your head.
“Give it to me straight,” you plead.
But who will break

it to you now? Well,
how bout you
plant me in the dirt,
I’ve had enough
of cheese curds.



Simina Banu is a Canadian poet. She is an outsider investigator of the oddities that inhabit the English language—from its strange punctuation, to its accidental musicality, to its meanings, unconfined by the structure of words, wandering and irretrievable. Her poetry has been featured in journals such as filling Station, The Feathertale Review, In/Words Magazine, untethered, and Otoliths. In 2015, words(on)pages press published her first chapbook, where art.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Tuesday poem #256 : Geoffrey Nilson : this could be a sequel



June 11, 2014

what roof will cover the end when blood orange is eleven
years one month & ten days after “Mission Accomplished.”
balaclavas wrap the bulletproof Humvee in evening ink.

bone script, prisoner flood, ghosts up to the knees & the flight
of all men charged to protect the city, uniforms shed like skin.
another beginning begs long off under shingles, a light

in the upper window. blink slow cartography, clear the map:
blackened Tigris, mountain ash, neighbours
turn to the tumult of ocean. the future has been levelled—

stillness paid in boxes, oriel windows & hospital deconstruction.
what will be worth fighting over. children rebuilt then again erased.
mannequins in the alley clothed in our garments. leaning

minaret splayed before dawn after eight centuries unobstructed
views of the river. present company a collection of life
less bodies. this is a version & yet also a lattice.





Geoffrey Nilson is a writer, editor and multimedia artist living in New Westminster on the unceded territory of the Qayqayt and Musqueam First Nations. His poems and essays have appeared in Poetry is Dead, The Capilano Review, subTerrain, CV2, and other journals. He is the author of four chapbooks and the most recent, In my ear continuously like a stream, appeared recently from above/ground press. Find more on his website at www.vcovcfvca.com.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday, February 20, 2018

Tuesday poem #255 : Emily Sanford : Dead | Lines



Deadlines are insinuated
tracks in winter snow and the forehead;
the phone on Sundays now.

The morning wash in October
and another year gone.
Lines left unwritten, like

blanking on stage—a look to cast
anywhere, a dropped cue,
missed class along the way.

Upon your upturned palm
which went unnoticed then—
power lines down and ominous.

A line thrown to submerged grasp
in desperation: A to B,
in time, or in memoriam.

A paragraph skipped
that time
was the distance between two points.

A pickup
on the horizon,
rivulet in rain—striation.

Patience as a virtue
is just a line— 
unfinished.



Emily Sanford was born in Nova Scotia and holds an MA in Literature and Performance from the University of Guelph. She is the winner of the 2016 Eden Mills Writers' Festival Literary Award for Poetry, shortlisted for the Janice Colbert Poetry Award, and won third place in the 2017 Blodwyn Prize for Fiction. One of her recent poems was listed amongst The 10 Best Poems of 2016, by Vancouver Poetry House. Her work appears in Canthius, Grain Magazine, Minola Review, newpoetry.ca, and Plenitude Magazine. Emily is the Creative Writing Program Administrator at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and volunteers for the Brockton Writers’ Series.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan