Tuesday poem #652 : Mark Laba : Cooking for Guard Dogs While Off Anti-Depressants

 

 

Monday:
L’eau de chien chaude avec bisque de tomato,
wiener tournadoes mit security guard.
Remember it’s the security guard that makes
this dish.
Otherwise it’s just another fatty wiener in oil water.
French and German inspired with some
contemporary twists.
Well-suited to eating on a staircase before
descending into the glob truss
setting off the shift of skin against the
shadows of all three branches of government. 

Tuesday:
My corpuscles dream of Raquel Welch. 

Wednesday:
Now the leash is off.
The body returned to dusk.
There’s a lushness to the shrubs
bordering the industrial park and
the barking of accountants
echoing through the evening hush
where I also hear the odd thrush
regurgitating food for its young,
not unlike the way I was fed when
my skull was still mush. 

Thursday:
By this time, it’s a tax write-off as
I sit on the bird-shit covered dock
making up words to explain this
phenomenal phenobarbital pheasant hunt. 

Friday:
This is actually when
God rests and smokes a
pack of smotes and shoots thunderbolts
like a weekend warrior chased by guard dogs
across a used car lot and not caring a lot
if his face gets eaten off under the glare of
theft prevention lights. 

Saturday:
After bacon and eggs
astral projection and then a visit
to the casino using my magic umbilical cord
to sway the slot machines into paying out huge
winnings, which I then stuff into
sauce casings. They can carry
more coins than you’d think and
in the alluvial times were used to knock
out your enemy with a might swing. 

Sunday:
Certain days make me think of
owls in washing machines and
the wind blowing through the skull
of Walt Disney,
a pleasurable dread before the eventual upheaval,
the trajectories of rival satellites
blowing themselves to smithereens
over a lovely afternoon at the public pool.

 

 

 

Mark Laba’s most recent books are Dummy Spit (Mercury, 2002), and The Inflatable Life (Anvil, 2019). He’s been in a bunch of other things, albeit intermittently. He won the first bpNichol chapbook award for The Mack Bolan Poems (Gesture, 1985). For eight years he was the restaurant reviewer for the Province newspaper in Vancouver.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #651 : Kit-Xgwelemc Kennedy : Paterain moment

 

 

make/unmake. our lips; the soft way warm water suspends your limbs; your breath; the flavour of a star's collapse the exquisite implosion the grandeur of an end and blood pulsed into fingertips.

weave/unweave. your hipbone juts into the pit of my knee; the decadence of lavender whorls crushed; the fat of my bicep; your back the grooves of your ribs; the dissolve of morality.

yes, i could vanish into this. perpetual weave/unweave. make/unmake.

 

 

 

 

 

Kit-Xgwelemc Kennedy is a Stuxtéws Secwepemc poet and undergraduate student at the University of Victoria. His poetry has been published in This Side of West and the Fellowship of the Unmoored. His writing explores identity, relationships and personal origins.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #650 : Marita Dachsel : Seaside Juniper

 

 

The man tells me what I believe
to be everything he knows
about this very special tree. And in the moment
I, too, am in love with it. I want to see one,
touch its shaggy bark, its spindly
needles, hold its blue berries, inhale
its essence. Days later, I have
forgotten almost everything.
There was something interesting
about its seeds and a certain insect,
something interesting about gin.
I recall that colonization continues
to be its biggest enemy, but that's
the way it is with most things around here.
I wish passion was more easily replicated
or retained but perhaps this ability
to slough the desires of others has saved me.
A person can only hold so much.

 

 

 

 

Marita Dachsel is the author of the poetry collections There Are Not Enough Sad Songs, Glossolalia, All Things Said & Done, and the play Initiation Trilogy. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the ReLit Prize, and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry. Her play Initiation Trilogy was nominated for both a Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script and The Critics’ Choice Innovation Award. Most recently, she co-edited Sharp Notions: Essays from the Stitching Life with Nancy Lee. She is an assistant teaching professor in the Writing Department at the University of Victoria.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
 

Tuesday poem #649 : Conal Smiley : Crocuses

 

 

The night slips its hand over
a sliver of light, and the ribs
are a rigid wing to shield the heart. 

The TV has no reception—

a radiant, blue screen

glowing in the room. Light a candle
and wait. Gold-blue
waves undulate on the walls. 

The mouth, a bush with chittering tenants.
Quiet syntax, flees the stalwart
tongue like sparrows in flight. 

Memory’s lacunae. What happened
last night? I can’t quite recall, but
I can feel its presence— 

a leg mingling with mine.

A rust-coated brain, cluttered
in corners where
experience can’t reach. 

The heart, beneficent
yet clouded. An orphan
of chance, left to fate’s claim. 

It was always the heart,

in search of a silent self beneath.
A crocus waiting, blooming late. 

I have seen enough
in my room for three lifetimes.
I need irrepressible luck

to make it through the back half.

Sliding toward an exit, before
the meal has begun. 

Never forget,
                       dawn is
                       as grievous as dusk, with
                       both at low-light as grey as a suit.

Conal Smiley was born in London, ON. His childhood was spent combing the aisles of bookstores, video stores and record shops, which is where his passion for the arts began. He is mostly self-taught, and after some creative writing classes at UofT, he decided to pursue poetry. He has released two chapbooks: The Winter Circus (above/ground, 2024) and A Blue Room (espresso, 2024); and is featured in the anthology Speech Dries Here on the Tongue (Porcupine’s Quill, 2025). He currently lives in Toronto and works in bookstores.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan