Tuesday poem #255 : Emily Sanford : Dead | Lines

Deadlines are insinuated

tracks in winter snow and the forehead;

the phone on Sundays now.

The morning wash in October

and another year gone.

Lines left unwritten, like

blanking on stage—a look to cast

anywhere, a dropped cue,

missed class along the way.

Upon your upturned palm

which went unnoticed then—

power lines down and ominous.

A line thrown to submerged grasp

in desperation: A to B,

in time, or in memoriam.

A paragraph skipped

that time

was the distance between two points.

A pickup

on the horizon,

rivulet in rain—striation.

Patience as a virtue

is just a line— 

unfinished.

Emily Sanford was born in Nova Scotia and holds an MA in Literature and Performance from the University of Guelph. She is the winner of the 2016 Eden Mills Writers' Festival Literary Award for Poetry, shortlisted for the Janice Colbert Poetry Award, and won third place in the 2017 Blodwyn Prize for Fiction. One of her recent poems was listed amongst The 10 Best Poems of 2016, by Vancouver Poetry House. Her work appears in Canthius, Grain Magazine, Minola Review, newpoetry.ca, and Plenitude Magazine. Emily is the Creative Writing Program Administrator at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, and volunteers for the Brockton Writers’ Series.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan