Tuesday poem #118 : Sarah Burgoyne : The Somnambulist Parade

Lord, we always knew you’d be famous. Having been spoon-fed spumoni all our lives. No broken bones. Send your new lover back to the farm and let me refuse another way of seeing. I used such hairy hands to leave the bread crumbs for no one but the thieves.

I am not so happy. Therefore I will take no more photographs. I will loose my onions to some new green arms. My brother’s father is dying. I wrote shit lines about hearts. Walk ahead of me old flames, and I will stalk you back to the station. No one else and no one else and no one else.

Maybe, an old man looks for mercies the way a child looks for winks from a stuffed bear. Some things: mercies, a wind across yucky water, another voice not going. No one will answer the full turn, so I stopped paying tribute. Look, I grow to formidable proportions. A desiccated bicycle on an old post slumps in the wake!

Whoever sent that dead rose, listen. Don’t keep me so far and long. Give me what I want (the things) and I promise to never lie down again. Don’t return to the pond without me. Forget your father’s name by the flour mill with your bicycle and jar of sacred almonds. I won’t come around. I’ll sit in the sycamore. And again.

Sarah Burgoyne lives and teaches in Montreal. Her latest chapbook Love the Sacred Raisin Cakes was published in November with Baseline Press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan