Tuesday poem #360 : MLA Chernoff : 4am Squelch (Building Most Hidden Underground Tunnel House By Ancient Skills In Deep Jungle TIMELAPSE)

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MLA Chernoff (@citation_bb) is a non-binary Jewish pome machine, a postmodern neomarxist, and somehow a PhD candidate at The Neoliberal University of York University. Their first collection of pomes, delet this, was released by Bad Books in 2018. Their second collection, TERSE THIRSTY, is now available through Gap Riot Press. Have a nice day and please stay hydrated.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #359 : Jónína Kirton : his and hers

his…

to be invited and then uninvited

to his grandson’s birthday

how long must one pay

for youthful transgressions

for not measuring up

to expectations
forged in late night chats

with girlfriends

before texting

before email

before he knew better

hers…

no one wants to know her body aches

that her shoes are not a fashion statement

that words, without a home, linger on her tongue

that between dreams a dampening has taken place

and there is a garden path between them

his love now expressed in the form of a cheque

theirs…

between them there is enough regret to go around

there are the blameless    grandchildren    victims

of a crime no one committed

but all witnessed

Jónína Kirton, a Red River Métis/Icelandic poet, author, facilitator and manuscript consultant currently lives in the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh. A graduate of the SFU Writer’s Studio in 2007, her first collection of poetry, page as bone ~ ink as blood, was released in April 2015 with Talonbooks. It has been described as “restorative, intimate poetry, drawing down ancestral ideas into the current moment’s breath.” A late blooming poet she was sixty-one when she received the 2016 Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for an Emerging Artist in the Literary Arts category. Her second collection of poetry, An Honest Woman, was a finalist in the 2018 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. 

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #358 : Henry Israeli : CAPITALIST DREAM SONG

It was never personal, just business

and we all know business must be free

for that’s the meaning of liberty

That’s the way the buildings reach the sky

That’s the way Wall Street scores its high

That’s the way to make a billion while a billion die

I like it when my stocks pay dividends

I like it when I crush my friends

I need to know how the world ends

To watch it in its final throws is a miracle

hurricanes rising like giant ghosts from the sea

half the nation drowning in water

the other half in debt

          My pastor climbs the pulpit

and praises my donation

He assures me of divine coronation

I climb to heaven

on the corpses of lesser men

Henry Israeli is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States and lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughters. His latest book is Our Age of Anxiety, is the winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize. His previous books are god’s breath hovering across the waters, (Four Way Books: 2016), Praying to the Black Cat (Del Sol: 2010), and New Messiahs (Four Way Books: 2002). He is also the translator of three books by Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku, and the founder and publisher of Saturnalia Books.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #357 : Emily Lu : SUPER EASY

Consider this my letter of resignation.

I have collapsed semi-prone into resting

orbitals of a runny yolk disposition

I never asked for. This

complete neglect in finding hard targets.

What else do you want

me to explain? Every meal I eat

alone is severance

is rice-hydrate, irreversible. Already

mid-month by the windowsill I remain non-fixed

hyperproductive still life overgrown. Can I

protest what            I see sprouted out from

sunstruck                        skin. I won’t dress-up

part-time.                          My next steps        

slow                                  brimming, brush

slack                              -jawed. I don’t

even                             have

to think

to get

this

right.

This poem first appeared in Sine Theta Mag

Emily Lu earned her B.Sc. at the University of Toronto and her M.D. at Queen’s University. Currently completing her postgraduate training in psychiatry, she lives in London, Ontario. Night Leaves Nothing New (Baseline Press) is her first chapbook.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan