Tuesday poem #200 : Daphne Marlatt : austral light

why does it surface now in the morning dark of a sodden West Coast street, that image of  sunlight shining off her arm, her pint-size white cotton singlet, standing in a tin tub set outdoors against the house, my baby sister holding onto the sides of the tub with an interrogative tilt to her head, provoked by a laugh? a call?   peering in light and shadow, facing what’s almost remembered, then turning her backside, busy with lifting something luminous, its pour --

two fading snaps from a backyard I couldn’t remember when I went back to search that Melbourne street. who was holding the camera?  my mother, pregnant again, my father returned to the chaos of post-occupied Penang, his absence eclipsed in that moment of light, tiaras of drops, their drench, splash-- Stop it! now!-- cascades we understood, extreme in the moment.

Born in Australia, Vancouver poet Daphne Marlatt immigrated to Canada from Penang, Malaysia as a child in 1951. A critically acclaimed poet (Steveston, Liquidities) and novelist (Ana Historic, Taken), her most recent poetry title, Reading Sveva (2016, Talonbooks) responds to the work and thought of the Italian-Canadian artist, Sveva Caetani.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #199 : Klara du Plessis : The poem is its own portrait

Two egg yolks

quivering in the icebox.

Kinesthetic swag

gold coins

kept together by the thinnest

of film.

Fertile artifacts

two little dots slightly gelatinous

at this point, prick to see

thick yellow nutrition

bulge a drop from the wound.

This way they keep

for a day or two, freshness is key

to art, panting, lapping up

paint with full nouns

like an adult.

Can albumin bleach

the translucent leak

from shaking separation

back and forth plopping

into halved shells, porous white

in a bowl and then the yellows

kept intact for now.

If quick-tempered

the shells are a light way of cracking.

Method acting

your way through life.

Tempera is a technique to paint

with pigments

powders, powder the cheeks

to fill in the blanks of dermis,

powders mixed with yolks

to form a consistency

that endures.

Application has a drier

sheen than oils

a hard shellac

but a fecund being.

Imagine painting in

reproductive cell tissue

ovum mother.

The embryo hidden in a yellow halo

is just another product

of modification, mindless protein

leveled across the canvas

like an insult

to all the babies relaxed

into existence.

Klara du Plessis [photo credit: Brian Campbell] is a poet and critic residing alternately in Montreal and Cape Town. Her chapbook, Wax Lyrical, was released from Anstruther Press, 2015, and a full-length collection of multilingual poems is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press. She curates the monthly, Montreal-based Resonance Reading Series, and writes reviews and essays for Broken Pencil Magazine, The Montreal Review of Books, The Rusty Toque and other journals. Follow her on Twitter @ToMakePoesis

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #198 : Alexandra Oliver : Hollywood. North.

Enter the actors. They’re rich in credential.

Their agency pages exhibit their charm:

They’ve triumphed in golf on an Afterschool Special

and shielded the crew of a shuttle from harm.

They’ve featured as coppers and strippers and spies,

a walk-on appearance as lawyer or doctor,

a dangerous alien in the disguise

of a different alien driving a tractor

through sad fields of lettuce on somebody’s farm.

Enter the actors. The locals, the specials.

The coastal celebrities, gusseted, glossed.

They’ve worked in the wilderness, hiding their bushels

under their lights, or wait (am I lost?),

the other way round. They’ve slaved for their dinners;

they’ve seated the lofty at sushi emporia,

wheeled on their sunniest teeth-flashing manners

while peddling fake leather pants at Aritzia,

striving for starlight, whatever the cost.

Enter the actors. They come to the party

in plummeting garments and collars of feathers

and wonder if thirty still means that they’re pretty

and should they keep trying if nobody bothers.

They’ve never known seagulls or longing for Moscow

or poked at a manuscript eaten by flames,

or scrubbed off the blood from their fingers in sorrow,

but look into our faces repeating their names:

their own, their own, not the others’, the others’.

Alexandra Oliver [photo credit: Dave Walker] was born in Vancouver, BC. Her 2013 collection Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (Biblioasis) received the 2014 Pat Lowther Award and was named a Poetry Book of the Year by The National Post. Her latest collection, Let the Empire Down (also Biblioasis)  was released this past March. A contributing editor for ARC Poetry and Partisan, as well as the former co-editor of Canadian formalist journal The Rotary Dial, Oliver is currently working towards a PhD in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #197 : Éireann Lorsung : From England

A postcard is complete:

perfect museum of its perfect world.

Even without stamps it finds you.

I have learned to drink my tea hot, I write.

This island is small as a trap.

The postcard gnaws my leg off.

Éireann Lorsung lives in Belgium, where she runs Dickinson House, an intimate residency space for writers and artists, and MIEL, a micropress.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan