Tuesday poem #123 : Victor Coleman : Jacques Derrida

A naked girl with long jade earrings trying to take a photograph with an empty camera

A small man with a tired face and a black bag came down the steps from the pier

In front of a faded stucco arch we skidded to a stop and I took my feet off the floor

When a guy out of the liquor traffic marries into a rich family

The same ash blonde in a suede-like black dress got up from behind it

Which means he's due to start getting stiff pretty quick now he's out in the air

Cars were parked on both sides of the highway with the usual ghouls of both sexes

Then he hits the pier hard and clean or he don't go through and land right side up

Seaward a few gulls wheeled and swooped over something in the surf

He fingered the head, peered at the bruise on the temple, moved it around with both hands

He opened his bag and took out a printed pad of D.O.A. forms and began to write

All she wanted was to kick a few high ones off the bar and have herself a party

Something that glistened in the morning sunlight was on its deck

He lifted a lax dead hand and stared at the fingernails

Victor Coleman lives and works in Toronto. His last four books were published by BookThug, including Miserable Singers (Book One) (2014). He has recently taught courses in modern and postmodern literature at Toronto New School of Writing, and leads an ongoing Writers Workshop at The Coach House Press that is open to anyone interested in “progressive” writing and thinking. He is currently working on a memoir, a history of small press publishing in English Canada (1940-1990), and a new volume of More Miserable Singers.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan.