after John Thompson’s “IX” from Stilt Jack
Milton Acorn.
Earle Birney. Louis Dudek. Irving Layton. Al Purdy.
Too many men have
been published too much.
The terms have thwarted any attempt to plough language:
eventually digits greater than eight may reveal themselves.
Find it in pages dogeared; Creator wrote
the destination; I stumbled upon it.
Someone has bastardized the best lines,
and I have taken all the credit:
We’ll cram in some Bowering and question the forecast,
pull on vapes, binge a true crime docuseries.
Large rocks, mitts cracked and dry, the tool
oblique appropriately. The dam of bulwarks stand.
You could say I’m checked out, already horizontal:
does a heavenly choir sound like kids screaming in a city park?
Occasionally I consider the legends brawl just for our attention:
I’m letting the autoplay cue up another episode.
Surely there’s a solution: I’m anxious,
observing the sands.
Chris Johnson (he/him) [photo credit: Curtis Perry] currently lives on unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. His latest chapbook is 320 lines of poetry (counting blank lines) (Anstruther Press, 2023).
the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan
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