Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Tuesday poem #572 : Kyle McKillop : Invalid Response

 

 

This headache is a life-sized dinosaur play park
fronted by dueling stegosaurus and T-Rex.
Small children race across the headache

to pet spikes, to pose beneath scaly haze.
Voices jumble—a father in jorts
shouts for everyone to squeeze closer

to the headache for posterity,
while a woman wipes a wild face
clean of mustard and screams

for another to climb down off
a smaller, sorer kid. Greasy hands
spill yellow popcorn from a miniature train

trudging its brontosaurus engine
across the headache, and velcroed shoes
leap from safety grating to ground,

a brief freedom from the tyranny of lineups.
In the lot, a poodle barks in a car under a tree,
the sun shadowing fingers of headache

across the asphalt. Family groups break away
now and then to explore the rest
of the headache: the triceratops nest,

the raptor enclosure, the pterodactyls—
how their wings spread, silhouettes
rammed into sky by the steel shafts

sunk into the headache. In the men’s room,
someone has left a topic of discussion
for the teenager who mops the headache,

and at the snack bar, cotton candy
headaches holey teeth. So where am I?
Follow the sign for the pachycephalosaurus,

yonder in a meadow encircled by magnolias.
I crouch there, teeth bared, forehead tilted,
forever glaring at something beyond

my frame of reference. The weight of this skull.
This headache. The blue sky and its white puffs.
They change shade, the first hint of sunset, of sleep.

 

 

 

 

Kyle McKillop is a poet and teacher with an MFA in creative writing from UBC. His work has appeared in CV2, English Practice, Quarandreams, Sustenance, and his chapbook What I Will Do For Attention, among others. He lives on the unceded shared traditional territory of the Katzie and Kwantlen First Nations.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Tuesday poem #571 : Anna Reckin : Linearity

 

 

 

Top melts fast to heart as quiet as worn silverware: ­– sugar-tongs, butter-knives (sterling, the real thing: faint tang of tarnish adds salt)

Ending sweetly: lotus pinks, indigo, orange lines, on a turquoise background. Faux-fauve, flowing

sillage all-but indecipherable

 

 

 

 

Anna Reckin lives and works in Norwich, England. She has two collections from Shearsman—Three Reds (2011) and Line to Curve (2018)—and her poems, reviews, essays and translations have appeared most recently in Long Poem Magazine and Tears in the Fence. Her chapbook, Saxifrage, Sideways, was included in Dusie Kollektiv 9 (2020).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Tuesday poem #570 : Loch Baillie : Blowjob Bildungsroman

 

 

The story of the boys on the dock / one peels
off his socks / and edges into the water / now
on my back / his shoes press into mine on the
mat / I sit up once / twice / focus on his knees
/ brown hairs up and down / the fronts of his
thighs / creeping under his shorts / now I’m
kneeling / on the beige carpet in the living
room / now I’m tearing a page from a book /
slipping it inside the play horse / it says nothing
/ neigh / nothing / now I am knees down on
the maroon carpet / now we’re in bed / my
childhood bed / grows with the child / said the
box / the dark wood followed me for years /
now the bedknobs gone / now I do things I
cannot speak of / knees down on year-round
car mats / I say stay / say pray / will forth / a
dandelion seed / blow it away / make a wish /
a wish: to become / a man on my own feet /
a wish: to become / a man without filling my
mouth / with someone else’s words.

 

 

 

 

Originally from Worcester, Massachusetts, Loch Baillie is a queer poet and writer living on the south shore of Quebec City. In 2023, he was mentored by ReLit Award-winning poet Simina Banu as part of the Quebec Writers’ Federation mentorship program. Loch’s writing has appeared in Font, Maclean’s, Maybe Magazine, Society Pages, and yolk literary. He is currently the poet-in-residence for Canada’s Jarislowsky Chair of Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. His debut chapbook Citronella (Anstruther Press) was published in early 2024.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan