Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Tuesday poem #643 : Colin Browne : From A Cup of Tea and a Tin of Fish

 

 

1.
fold the table
put it away 

the books
must go
on the floor 

sand generously

 

2.
nibbled cladding 

a lost grammar

 

3.
whiffed
thyme 

 

4.
all roads
lead to
one place 

avoid roads

 

5.
only one thing
for so long 

so, so long

 

6.
04:10, let the wind do its work
heal this wound 

 

7.
my great aunt
on the lawn
with the Bren gun 

taking a bead
on deadheads
in Cow Bay 

 

8.
i’m making a list
of all the hands
i’ve held in mine
what is my name?
phantom-chaser

  

9.
it’s only the new sewer pipe
going in
but now we’ll know
the sound of tanks
in the streets
at night

  

10.
the brother on the grass
behind the pink Safeway
legs tucked up into his coat
four hundred days
into the pandemic 

 

11.
great aunt at the woodstove
plunging a stick
in and out
of an open kettle
churning smalls
in Kelowna 

 

12.
lockets on strings
around their necks
who is that? 

this i’m told is my mother
and that is my father

  

13.
fellings?
who’s asking?

  

14.
a lark ascending
without a lark
Marx, mute, in the park 

spring peepers
tonight, i hear you
loud and Clare 

 

15.
perhaps the lost one 

saw clearly

  

16.
the stars on my shirt tonight 

albaplena in the upper field

 

17.
David McFadden, in the bookstore 

recommending The Confessions
of Saint Augustine*

  

18.
farewell old guys in regimental ties 

my savings are more lethal                         

 

19.
i’d like to step out of history

  

20.
if a word becomes a flag
burn it
 

28 July 2025

 

 

* Nelson, B.C. September 1982.

 

 

 

Two recent collaborations between Colin Browne and composer Alfredo Santa Ana were premiered in early April at the Fox Cabaret in Vancouver. A collection of Colin’s texts for music, entitled Into the Air, is in the works. His new book, The Possible, is an account of the visits by Surrealist artists to the Northwest Coast in the early 20th century. The book details the experiences of Kurt Seligmann and his wife Arlette in Hazelton, B.C., during the summer of 1938, and the journeys of Wolfgang Paalen, Alice Rahon, and Eva Sulzer from Alaska to Vancouver Island from June-August 1939.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

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