Tuesday poem #325 : Jordan Davis : LOVE, for Scott Miller

It was a nice planet
until the girl Jesus showed up
and then it was very heaven—

The way, the truth, the hot, white light—

And her miracle, the budding—
the fun old ways She healed
with Her television shows
we couldn’t turn off—

Everyone of Her the same DNA
and they keep Their number constant

She knows better than we did
how to keep those of us
who gave up our father and our mother
and all the children—

to walk with Her all our days



Jordan Davis’s second book, Shell Game, appeared in 2018 from Edge Books.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #324 : Rob Winger : 19/85 (LETTER FOR TWO, LOST)

for Alicia and Eldon

1.

Dear friends, have I given you October?
How the deepest lakes fill with blue?
Or the tired hills turn to vinyl sleeves?
You’ve seen it before, I know.

But still. It’s here.



2.

They cut the earth for you
into tight, crisp cubes.
Chestnut horses by the pond, that breeze.
From here, you can still see

where the old ports met
their muddy banks, cleaved
Ecclesiastes into bread.
Some of that was yours. Remember?



3.

I’ve chosen lines for your mother.
The ones with cracks that let the light on in.
They tack them up beside your pictures,
eternally looping on the closed-circuit TV.

There’s nothing smart to say



4.

Out in the field, you already knew that.
We all get basement cake
when the service finally ends,
you said. Why not share the recipe?



5.

Along the highway, they’ve finally
patched the busted bridge.
It holds my car above
a tiny creek
filled with microscopic things
already preparing for winter.

We're all riding the brake.



Rob Winger's first book, Muybridge's Horse, lost some of Canada's most prestigious literary awards. He's also the author of The Chimney Stone and, most recently, Old Hat. Rob lives in the hills northeast of Toronto, where he teaches at Trent University.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #323 : Brenda Brooks : Ebb

The thrill is gone, she said.  

Life’s not one long jubilee anymore:

Left last night — won’t be back.

But to be fair she put it kinder

(she was always very polite)

and clarified the situation over many hand-

written pages of textured linen warm as rum,

or the dune-colored chapters from

an old book about shipwrecks.

To and fro rolled her indigo waves —

a lonely mariner’s log recording miles

& miles of overboard losses:

Eight pages.

Eight abandoned beaches

of late September.

As for flotsam:

a single strand of her hair.

Brenda Brooks has published two poetry collections and a novel, Gotta Find Me an Angel, a finalist for the Amazon.ca/Books In Canada First Novel Award. Her work has been included in anthologies in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Her new novel, HONEY, a passionate, dangerous, noirish tale about, well, two women, will be published by ECW Press in Fall of 2019.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #322 : Lindsay Turner : FORMS OF DISPLEASURE

the hawks are a-nesting
storms in the evenings
no the hawks are re-nesting
the forest is gone

they clearcut the forest
the smell of black plastic
the forms of displeasure
circling the lot

prescient bright winged things
big iridescent bubbles
the forms of displeasure
blow over like storms

what you need to understand is
it's systems not people
the bright formal nothings
go rising up the hill

it’s systems not people
it’s braided with pleasure
phthalates and parabens
circling like drones

what goes in the new space
are you the new girl
like rotted out rope strands
the rope hollow at the core



Lindsay Turner is the author of Songs & Ballads (Prelude, 2018). Her translations from the French include Ryoko Sekiguchi's adagio ma non troppo (Les Figues, 2018), and Stéphane Bouquet's The Next Loves (Nightboat, 2019). She lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Furman University.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan