Tuesday poem #261 : Matthew Johnstone : Dear Trud,

What slows to omen / to you, a series of palms losing them hand,

repeating in / split avocados, slow relation to now. You are reminded

to are, and this remind / on you, locked in pools, made how turning

a thing to keep it sometimes / fell to mud, collected into lake any

speaking, near windless, the body is in a body of water / unfolding

itself. We hook in rest, cold stations / curled moveable sea, the sun

vertical in your mouth. It was warm where you were half this / earth,

visible also where in cease, as nothing, were in unison / forward of

inertia, proving it figment, still / as fed stars.

Matthew Johnstone is author of the collection Let’s be close  Rope to mast you, Old light (Blue & Yellow Dog, 2010), and the chapbooks o n e (Inpatient Press, 2015), Note on Tundra (DoubleCross Press, 2016), Eater, of mouths (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2017) and ( kiln ) (above/ground press, 2017). He co-edits 'Pider (pidermag.com) and hosts the E t A l. Poetry Readings, both of Nashville, Tennessee.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #260 : Madhur Anand : Influence is Infinitely Circuital: a found poem

The formerly abused have moved

to action. Tabooed circumstances

matter. It is against my principles

to ignore it.  Nowadays the current

is instantaneous, a curl

of expression. Reversal arises.

The attractive repel one another.

A working agent follows

the bodies pushed together

by translational motion.

It may be worth distorting the lines.

There is only so much latitude.

There are the portions, vanishing, the necessary

smallness, the debatable

amount of needless pressure.

Mystery does not enlighten us in the least

and we are wasted by friction.

A single moving particle,

scarcely any physics in it,

suggests something better.

Personal identity lends itself

to great exhaustion.

Ignore it then by saying

we fall together.

Heaviside, Oliver. (1893) A Gravitational and Electromagnetic Analogy Part I, The Electrician, 31: 281-282

Madhur Anand’s debut book of poems A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes (McClelland & Stewart, 2015) was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and listed by CBC as one of 10  “trailblazing” Canadian poetry collections to read. Her award-winning prose has appeared in a number of magazines including The Puritan, Brick, and The New Quarterly. More recent poems have appeared in The Walrus, Carte Blanche and CNQ. She currently serves as poetry editor for CNQ.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #259 : Chelene Knight : Apartment 301 near the low track

When your house catches fire, I’ll free the dogs.

I’ll wrap your vases in paper and stop

fingers from shakin’. Look you in the eye.

I’ll consider pink-sheep-skin, I sleep in

the holes of my pockets, my hands dug deep.

No coins, no bills, but ain’t no poor one here.

I still got jewels in throat — embedded,  

planted well behind the voice, the word box,

and still the birds flock ‘round me, as they should.

We got things to get done they’d say. I’ll stand

there — solid. My face red, hot, wet, hungry.

Feed the hand, or the hand that feeds us all.

It don’t matter where you grow it, we’ll eat.

Black stones in a white fire, the flame— washed out.

Chelene Knight was born in Vancouver and is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at SFU in multiple genres. In addition to being a workshop facilitator for teens, she is also a regular literary event organizer and host. She has been published in various Canadian and American literary magazines. Chelene is currently the Managing Editor at Room magazine. Braided Skin, her first book (Mother Tongue Publishing, March 2015), has given birth to numerous writing projects including her second book, Dear Current Occupant (forthcoming with BookThug, 2018). She was also one of the judges for the 2017 Vancouver Writer’s Festival Contest Chelene is now working on a novel set in the Strathcona neighbourhood of Vancouver in the 1930s-50's known as Hogan's Alley.