Tuesday poem #334 : Sadie McCarney : Seasonal

Give the bitch her season.

Let's call her Marguerite, say

she's hollow as a dried-out

gourd with seeds that rattle

inside like a maraca. Assume

that she’s a whore of careers

and ideas, flitting from music

to God to business.

                         Let's give her

Spring. Marguerite can design

my whole damn mental Spring

catalogue in lines of website code

instead of poems, or decide from

the mauve of a crocus bloom to

farm fields of lavender for a job.

But if we don't give her a season,

she'll steal it. I wish

                          I could chart

her cycles like menses, the estrus

and rut of a whole new worldview

to be thrown out like yogurt cups,

potato peelings. Marguerite doesn't

give a shit for my feelings, the shame

of being asked what I do for a living.

What was it this week, again? I forget.

The trollop changed it all on me. Again. 

Sadie McCarney's work has appeared in literary publications including The Malahat Review, The Puritan, Grain, Plenitude, EVENT, Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, PANK Magazine, and Room, as well as The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2015 and The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English. In 2016, she was a finalist for the Malahat Review Far Horizons Award for Poetry; in 2017, a finalist for the Walrus Poetry Prize. Sadie's first full-length book, Live Ones, is forthcoming from the University of Regina Press in Fall 2019. 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #333 : Luke Bradford : Great Horned Owl

for Anthony Etherin

go! loth wanderer,

    wrangled hooter,

lorn weather-god,

    leeward: go north.

retread (how long?)

    nae old regrowth

nor whorled gate:

    leeward, go north.

another grew old:

    the lorn dowager,

the warlord gone;

    the lord wagoner,

the lard-row gone;

    the orange world,

the oranger wold.

    leeward, go north.

lo! goth wanderer,

    hooted wrangler,

elated, grow horn—

    oh! grow antlered,

(oh! grown altered)

    row, tangled hero,

(oh! tangled rower)

    leeward: go north.

how terra longed

     (how golden, terra)

to harrow legend,

     to lead her wrong.

how terra longed

     (how golden, terra):

the orange world

     another red glow.

oh! gentled arrow,

    loathed, regrown,

dart erelong (how

    long?) toward here.

oh! let danger row

    thee, lorn war-god,

regaled two-horn,

    leeward: go north.

oh, row! let danger

    adorn thee; growl,

glow, ardent hero,

    long-eared, wroth:

dart erelong (how

    long?) toward here.

go: a netherworld

    doth glow, nearer...

Luke Bradford is an experimental poet living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His latest collection of constrained poetry, Glossology, is available for free download as a PDF or for purchase as a book at lukebradford.xyz/glossology. His work has been published by Penteract Press, Spacecraft Press, and Timglaset.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #332 : J.I. Kleinberg : don't worry

J.I. Kleinberg is artist, poet, freelance writer, and co-editor of 56 Days of August (Five Oaks Press 2017) and Noisy Water: Poetry from Whatcom County, Washington (Other Mind Press, 2015). A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, her found poems have appeared in Diagram, Heavy Feather Review, Rise Up Review, The Tishman Review, Hedgerow, Otoliths, and elsewhere. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and blogs most days at chocolateisaverb.wordpress.com and thepoetrydepartment.wordpress.com.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #331 : Zane Koss : two sonnets for mike chaulk

                        i.

what angles this (attach  4/21

send documents, attach

track birds on horizons  hit send;

on the deck, a pigeon encroaches

and wave it away with a hockey

stick to give precise an account

of how long we live; the mallard can,

and joins the gaps in branches; out

fishing, and wonder to share this

with you, to share this with you

send lines, and under, scout surface,

lines stuck in, log jams, go back

hit send   and we visit ,there now

where home, docx and edit   hit send ,  was

                                          and wait for, return

                        ii.

house is, this desire is, tied back to notions 4/26 5/01

of a specific labour, of a time or means

exploitation that i can’tget back to

find myself dreaming rivers on the train,

in front of my computer, talking

while we watch tv / but not that

there, here think checking the river

levels on the drive, car wheels

rattling wooden    bridge; how the

right song then could   just, one ready             , and that

was never lived up to like it felt but

if you could get that track to click just

write, and i could be back there

or there or,              here is where

                  i am attach, send, return, to go back:

go back.

Zane Koss is a non-resident alien currently living in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He was raised on the traditional lands of the Ktunaxa (Kootenay) and Secwépemc (Shuswap) people. His critical and creative work can be found in the Chicago Review, CV2, Poetry is Dead, and elsewhere. He has two chapbooks of poetry, job site (Blasted Tree, 2018) and Warehouse Zone (Publication Studio Guelph, 2015), with two more forthcoming thi year with above/ground press. Zane is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at New York University, where he researches Canadian and Mexican poetry in the 1960s and 1970s. web: https://wp.nyu.edu/zanekoss/

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan