Tuesday poem #86 : Mercedes Eng : my anti/gentrification sampler

A    affordable home ownership

B    business improvement assoc.

C    community benefits agreement

D   downtown ambassadors

E    economic development

F   fixed rate

G   greenest city

H   heritage incentives

I    interest free

J    job opportunities

K   kick em while they’re down

L    luxury condo

M   mortgage

N   nimby

O   organic produce/d by the poor

P    public/private partnerships

Q   quality of life

R   revitalization

S   social enterprise

T   ticketing

U  universities

V  value

W  warrant checks

X  xanax

Y  youyouyouyouyou

Z  zoning

A    accumulation

B    bourgeois sanctuary

C  communize

D  displacement

E  eviction

F  food security

G  gentrification

H   homes not prisons!

I  inclusion

J  justice

K  Keynesian economics

L  landlord

M  mobilize

N  neighbours

O  organize

P    public/private policing

Q  quality of life

R  real estate speculation

S  social housing now!

T  tenant rights

U  unceded Coast Salish land

V  values

W  women’s memorial march

X  xenophobia

Y  yuppies and yes men

Z  zero sum game

Mercedes Eng is a writer and teacher in Vancouver, Coast Salish territory. Eng's first book of poetry, Mercenary English (CUE, 2013), is described as a "risky and profoundly unsettling work of 'autocartography'". Her work has appeared in various literary and critical journals, chapbooks, public art projects, and protests.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #85 : Aaron Tucker : What letter of the alphabet has lots of water?

midnight car alarms yowls us awake + so
we listen to the coughing air conditioner pour noise
a low level language microcode between hotel + occupant
that cough the same subroutine as my father’s distinct cough
a hunnh that separates him in under-populated malls || grocery stores


those coughs: one huddles around suitcases + pours
the other is both lungs, an intimate root-assemblage pulse
an exchange in which an object is merely a singular collection
of functionality + inheritance + containment, assembly-language


each noise demands an impulsive instinctual linking
instruction to object, where the slow roll of an analog wave
beautiful, full, is equal to the steady tide dragging ashore
evaporites made of potassium gypsum tin
limestone copper quartz germanium silicon


polymorphic || the ability to be in two distinct forms
one the cough of a machine the other the cough of a father
complied languages one sharp the other plus || plus plus
an elegant primordial subroutine that conflates macrominerals
+ pulses + essential chlorides + calciums, each equal

Aaron Tucker’s first book of poetry punchlines is being released by Mansfield Press in Spring of 2015. An earlier version of punchlines was released by above/ground in the summer of 2013. His poetic works and reviews have been published across Canada. His previous chapbook, apartments, was shortlisted for the 2010 bpNichol Chapbook award. As well, he is the co-creator of the ChessBard, an app that translates chess games into poems that can be found at chesspoetry.com.

His collection of essays Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in July of 2014.

In addition, he is a professor in the English department at Ryerson University where he is currently teaching essay writing and digital literacy to first year students.

He is working on learning chess in between watching his beloved Raptors lose games. You can reach him at atucker[at]ryerson[dot]ca and aarontucker.ca

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #84 : Carrie Olivia Adams : from “Daughter of a Tree Farm”

My father and mother, a daughter. The branches that obscured the view. The same, instill fortune while embroidering a private govern language. The itch of a secret. And science, a believer. The distance lent me the simplicity of reduction. Everything in correlations of atoms but want of the ordinary. I gave up for ever at home. In life I remember present, read to represent a promise concentrating, carried away. A great many books ending with “I was fascinated and surprised.” That tongue developed out of the feeble growth of a living creature.
 

In the dark of the farm, we would sit till late. At that time I tried very hard. It was in a letter wrote little and rarely replied. With us, every new idea or the carrying of some instance wrote upon me the idea of history. My father, it was because he felt the beauty of his own creations that time was not bad. Serving has given strength. I also war. And peace when I am carried away. Sometimes, all the winter had been read to me.


When material, namely miserable, muffled-up. I am writing to tell you. In November, I sent it to my harm. I was often astonished and could not understand why, corrected or destroyed, I used to be delighted. Sometimes, a request or a gram would be sent to substitute. My whole became instance, frequent repetitions of the same wooden point. Sometimes, my remarks, explain my clumsy afterwards.

 
Newly written, some passages in war had to be copied over and over again. Others, the hunting party in peace were read aloud. Allowed often in life, when works not only move but grieve suddenly. Haven’t you remembered the old oak forest near the house lighted up by the sun and the fields? Dictate to me. Pass away home.

Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago, where she is a book publicist for the University of Chicago Press and the poetry editor for Black Ocean. She is the author of Forty-One Jane Doe’s (book and companion DVD, Ahsahta 2013) and Intervening Absence (Ahsahta 2009) as well as the chapbooks Overture in the Key of F (above/ground press 2013) and A Useless Window (Black Ocean 2006). Her third book, Operating Theater is forthcoming from Noctuary Press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #83 : Marilyn Irwin : murder, old ottawa south

one means anger; two is mirth; three a wedding; four a birth; five is heaven; six is hell; seven is the devil himself.

we walked

paved

in argument

you were lying

i called you on it

thought i could

hold your hand

and make you shut up

enjoy the October sun

then, Hitchcock quiet

black leaf swarm

perched, scheming

so loud we stopped

dead flat defend attack

found our way

back to your apartment

there is always a cure

Marilyn Irwin’s work has been published by above/ground press,  Arc Poetry Magazine (where she is a Contributing Editor), Bywords, In/Words, and New American Writing, among others.

A graduate of Algonquin College’s Creative Writing program and winner of Arc’s 2013 Diana Brebner Prize, she has three chapbooks: for when you pick daisies (2010), flicker (2012), and little nothings (2012). for when you pick daisies was reprinted in full in the collection Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013. 

She is currently shaping her first full-length collection.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan