Tuesday poem #310 : Tanis MacDonald : Hawks and Handlers

At the Medieval Faire we watch

two women in leather jerkins

cinched with wide brown belts and 

tethered to their wrists a peregrine

hawk with its dark head and slate wings

and a barn owl with a face like

a Venn diagram and the hawk handler says

They don’t like being with us so we can’t

pet them and they won’t fly to glove

for food because the hawk will ball

its claws up and punch its prey to break

its neck before eating it

but we keep these big birds fed and

protected so they are getting all their

needs met and aren’t looking for another

relationship and all the couples and maybe

some singles in the crowd laugh and

the hawk handler blushes. She didn’t

mean it that way not at all and I look

at you with your camera to your eye

twisting the lens for a close-up of the owl’s

white face floating in the dim tent and know

the cat will spring at our ankles when

we walk in the door she will bare

her teeth and pounce preparing for the day she’ll

take us down with matching thuds and eat us

beginning with our eyes

and know we were getting all our needs met

Tanis MacDonald is the author of five books of poetry and essays, including Out of Line: Daring to Be an Artist Outside the Big City, and the editor of two collections. Her next poetry book, Mobile, will be out with Book*hug in Fall 2019. Recent work has appeared in Atlantis, Understorey, Prairie Fire, and Lemon Hound. She lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #121 : Shannon Maguire : Incorrigible

Night off! borrowed frock peach berserk smoke thick as vaseline over tux-tails on dance floor. spontaneous combustion neckings in annex storefronts & roommates walk in while pinned under at knife point (fully clothed on living room carpet). they smile and creep up servants’ stairs assuming negotiated, but total surprise, actually & last of three dates with aspiring romance novelist. Night off! cherry beach blind date. idea for never-to- be-made-film starts with exterior night butch with pretty face stripped naked (but not shown in titillating way) and cuffed by group of cops cut to exterior sunrise she hobbles wearing only a shirt pulled down as far as it goes about fourteen blocks to brownstone where femme in 60s dress opens door registers shock ushers inside cut to exterior we’re walking all night different parts off city, stalling, cut to interior crack of pancakes at mel’s in annex close as we get. ever. Night off! cherry bomb at andy pool hall outside in line waiting in rain goosed by leather dyke, quickie in stall with different butch cabbing home: her dime my place chocolate martinis eight or nine between us turns into four months, ends in choking & bruises, so much for that. Night off! coffee with straight femme friend that other friends ridonculously think is perfect match, admit fear-flight thresholds screaming but soooo not border patrol! rush off to date four with bi femme met though dial-in service in free weekly, sex on date three outstanding but spend evening unintentionally recalling scraps of convo with straight friend and date knows it, long subway ride to work after part of night spent in 24-hour greasy spoon with severe case of the broods. Night off! after-shift close encounter with zombie walk, wanting to join but not quite dressed for horror success, instead meandering westward everyone away for not-holiday weekend. Night off! first day off fifteen day juice cleanse carefully timed to coincide with severe lack of funds, attend friend’s poetry launch skinny as grade 11, mutually flirting with scorching but much younger trans guy when combo of gifted intoxicants pile drives night. Night off! three months since last kiss & total mess so write “kiss stranger” as item three on to-do list as prank never guessing that out with friend that night would meet “The Voice” from cbc and kiss a tall stunning blond, saved from dying of boredom and loneliness, lake-locked, lost in own coils.

Shannon Maguire's [photo credit: Tanis MacDonald] first collection, fur(l) parachute (BookThug), was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry, the Golden Crown Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Manitoba Magazine Awards in the category of Best Suite of Poems. She was a finalist for the bpNichol Chapbook Award for her chapbook Fruit Machine (Ferno House) and has a poem in The Best American Experimental Writing of 2014 (OmniDawn). Her second collection, Myrmurs, is forthcoming from BookThug in fall 2015.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan