Tuesday poem #343 : Guy Birchard : My Tom "Roadkill" Bridwell

               (1945 - 2017)

The past is a spit-bucket.

In that Way of hers,

Anne dreamed

about Tom Bridwell

the night before

we got the mail

Howard wrote

telling Tom died.

Imprudent as may be

to relate one's dreams

at large, still to whom

she favors is confided

the nightvision

of having sent Tom

that trio of drawings actualized

quite awake:

the conical party hat 

run over in the street,

rescued, transported,

drawn thrice, dubbed in his name,

"The Roadkill Drawings."

Tom wrote,

It's passing strange... reading

Birchard... stranger still actually

understanding. He said,

I take a very long time to eat,

rereading Birchard. Said,

Hecatomb requires

ten or twelve

at the pub, at the laundromat.

Qualified praise thus:

My favorite Canadian

poet. The Canadian

Basho, said Tom. Elsewhere:

This rabbit, especially the gravy,

with lots of fresh-ground pepper,

and rice as transport,

preternaturally rich and earthy,

makes me feel so good

that I am almost guilty.

In the end we need a

Roadkill Concordance

to locate among his reams

of dense paragraphs the one

from the cemetery up his Ridge

citing (sans attribution) ... neglected

graves

               collapsing

Guy Birchard : Cigarette Cards (Vermont: Longhouse, 2009), Further than the Blood (Boston: Pressed Wafer, 2010), Hecatomb (Brooklyn: Pressed Wafer, 2017), Aggregate: retrospective (Bristol: Shearsman Books, 2018), Only Seemly (St. John's: Pedlar Press, 2019).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #342 : Terese Mason Pierre : Subject

And yet again

The sun is not afraid of anything

I, too, present no threat to

the buffeted comfort

you purchased that time

I covered

the blue flowers on my cheeks

with an invisible dusting

Everything the light touches

is something to conquer,

to contain. I am in a

brass container, your fingers

brush the edges. I can see the inside

of your nose, into your brain

You made sure the lamp

was decorated well, so

well, I can’t ignore

your desires—you throw

dresses at me, wine and rouge

for days, sharp diamonds

that sparkle red seeds on

my skin. You rub me often.

Outside, you insist

the world has ended—the sun

has shrank in fear, and so, too, will I

barrier-free, you-free

But windows are wide, you provided

those. Nothing should be more

transfixing than your story.

And yet

Terese Mason Pierre is a writer, editor and organizer. Her work has appeared in the Hart House Review, Bad Nudes, and Train: a poetry journal, among others. She is currently the poetry editor of Augur Magazine, a Canadian speculative and surrealism literature and art journal. Terese is also a co-host of Shab-e She’r Poetry Night, and a co-organizer of Slant Reading Series. Terese lives and works in Toronto.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #341 : Andrew Cantrell : The shape of speech sounds

Carefully is why anyone articulate in stained white night-clothes descried in the face of one who wandered a series pressed absolutely. A foundation strained by slumber. A moon not night or near to new. A language dormant and bound in rasp of night’s dismantling. Any series discerned carefully thus begins or forms an absolute beginning. Where moonlight in its coming call to forming senses no longer uncommon lights longer. Where cropped in beginning night's dim grasp beguiling glints come copper and comely. Where newly found beginnings carom there in wearied air. Foundations bound and stitched in series' absolute violence and blight. No longer do nights linger where a longer light lingers there. Their straining in the very prison where their violent letters bind us with lawlike fathers and inked tongues. Now there the how-so facticity of preterition opens to a slumbering anyone the dormant and elided languages by which the face of another founds itself together with so much as any one of us. One object come copper in cropped red light's only nothing. Neither resemblance begun nor signifying nor only a becoming-syllable. But implicate in any coming face it composes a language of objects and entities as such. Carefully is why anyone traversed the waking volumes of these unuttered tongues. Why in sifting ashes broke a violent peace its coming descried in old and scarring airs. Why anyone sang when time abounded in an implicate opening a music taught by heretofore untaught speaking. A language mounting shining to a singing in series of its own.

Andrew Cantrell is the author of the chapbooks Phantom Equator (above/ground press) and Stratigraphy (Finishing Line Press). His work has appeared in many places, including Posit, Lana Turner, Black Sun Lit, and Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology.  He lives in Chicago where he works as a union organizer.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan