Tuesday poem #207 : Brian Henderson : Words / How to perform the taste test

Everything swims upstream against the stickiness of vision

The street the house in the street the room in the house

The desk in the room the book on the desk the cut forest

The various chemistries the words in the book the desk

On which lies a book in the book and at which I am

Sitting everything is a door including the thumping

Helicopter of the grouse its wings pounding like a heart

You’ve stuck to my vision in the kitchen like the persistent

Brightness that remains once you close your eyes on the window’s

Gathering of the morning you don’t hear the helicopter you

Hear an unstartable motor one thing is always more than

One thing don’t you find words for instance a word is

A door a sound an etymology that is to say a continual

Transformation in time a reach is unique but also

Reusable for instance the word I’m thinking of bitcom

Telepathy autoimmunity chrysalis Lily Cup landfill

Tom-tom aubade ocean otter operand is probably being

Used in someone else’s sentence right now is a series

Of syllables or a single letter letter not yet mailed you

Put it in one fire and it burns green in another blue in

Another orange in another it’s knowledge that burns

To cinders when known and so forth in a secret

Solution and its invisibility rises to the surface and

Floats away though it’s addressed to you and you

Have to drink the solution that might be

Purple or teal or tea-coloured and has

A pleasantly sweet smoky finish

Brian Henderson is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including The Alphamiricon, a box of visual poetry (also on the web here), Nerve Language, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, Sharawadji, shortlisted for the Canadian Authors Association Award for Poetry, and [OR]. He’s at work on word swarms of liminal spaces and is a once-upon-a-time director of WLUPress.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan