Tuesday poem #464 : Matt Robinson : YARDWORK

 

 

 

The low rock wall’s a Sunday’s cobbled, rough analog

for the job of a lyric. Another poor, dirty trick of jagged
edges sat & fit & begat & knit together against
impending weather, its elements; those assumptions
& tectonic shifts. This is all a tenuous gift. Being left
sweaty & strained against the effort of it. But it’ll all go
to shit. Your back grunts with the stoney transit
from there to here & here to there, the air thick
in your lungs as things work themselves into something
akin to a semblance of line, makeshift. Both hands filthy;
knuckles skinned just a bit. There’s a benign spilling
of blood, or whatever muddy suspension of dirt
& leaked sweat oils the slick rift of your skin. Of course,
everything must first start if it’s meant to end. Even
stones, orchestrated; a pointless attempt to rend, to begin
again, to impose an order on unoffending nature & its eventual
upending, or mending, to when it reverts to whatever
it is it intends for itself.

 

 

 

 

Matt Robinson’s new poetry collection Tangled & Cleft, his sixth, was released by Gaspereau Press in Fall 2021. Other recent publications include Sometimes It’s Entertainment; Some Other Nights Just Work (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and the chapbooks Against (Gaspereau, Press, 2018) and a fist made and then unmade (Gaspereau Press, 2013). He lives in Halifax, NS, with his family, and plays a fair bit of beer league hockey.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #463 : Jessica Laser : William James

 

 

 

As I enter the station, my first heart stops.
I begin, chopping the foot of a tree.
Its branches are unmoved by my act.
Its leaves murmur. Peacefully as ever,
I do violence to the foot of a man.
I hear the conductor calling “all aboard!”
If I stumble as I run
If a cinder enters my eye

I enter the station.
The conductor calling “all aboard!”
Stops my first heart stopping
My second heart beating
The foot of a tree, the foot
Of a man. I hear violence calling
Its branches unmoved.
They are moved, I insist.

 

 

 

Jessica Laser was born and raised in Chicago. She is the author of Planet Drill (Futurepoem Books, forthcoming), winner of the Other Futures Award, and Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides (Letter Machine Editions, 2019). 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #462 : Therese Estacion : Iron Body

 

 

I am no longer attached to my flesh.   Even so, it is difficult to go out into the world like this. Half other.        A peek into the perpendicular universe full of cyborgs. I am sometimes afraid of the hurtling. Our assigned junkyards filled with medical equipment and assisted living devices.   My body moves in prone mode. Exposing some truth stored in our limbic systems.         Perhaps I am a heroine in the

               iron mud

 

 

 

 

Therese Estacion is part of the Visayan diaspora community. She is an elementary school teacher and is studying to be a psychotherapist. Therese is also a bilateral below knee and partial hands amputee, and identifies as a disabled person/person with a disability. Therese lives in Tkaronto. Her poems have been published in CV2 and PANK Magazine, and were shortlisted for the 2021 Marina Nemat Award. Her first collection of poems, Phantompains, was published by Book*Hug in Spring 2021.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan