Tuesday poem #466 : Elizabeth Clark Wessel : Sticks

We woke up
to a constitutional crisis.
Couldn’t smell it,
taste it, never did see it.
We took a breath
it flooded our cells
the tiny clap of electricity
between our synapses.
We spent the morning
on the playground
avoiding dog shit
with tiny flies buzzing
around it, sitting on rocks,
picking up sticks
running as fast
as we could.
We didn’t know it yet,
but those sticks
were our constitutional
crisis. We got hungry
we got tired.
Everything pulsated
with an energy
we couldn’t quite place.
It lingered above and below us
It flattened what wouldn’t
be penetrated.
What I mean to say is
the world kept ending,
and we kept loving each other
anyway.
Isn’t that dumb.
Isn’t that just about the dumbest thing
you ever heard.

 

 

 

Elizabeth Clark Wessel is the author of four chapbooks of poetry, the translator of numerous Swedish novels, and a founding editor at Argos Books. Originally from rural Nebraska, these days she calls Stockholm, Sweden home.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #465 : Ayaz Pirani : Ontario

 

 

I put the lake on notice
and said goodbye.

It wasn’t just a blue face
speaking plain speech.

The lake was full-stop.
Wide and deep.

My father had Victoria
to lean on

something massive like
childhood grief

that lets you charm
other earthlings.

I licked a two-scoop,
watched parasols parade.

I put the lake on notice
and said goodbye.

 

 

 

Ayaz Pirani’s books include Happy You Are Here (The Word Works, 2016), Kabir’s Jacket Has a Thousand Pockets (Mawenzi House, 2019) and Bachelor of Art (Anstruther Press, 2020). His work recently appeared in The Malahat Review, ARC Poetry Magazine and The Antigonish Review. A new book, How Beautiful People Are, is forthcoming from Gordon Hill Press.

rhe Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #464 : Matt Robinson : YARDWORK

 

 

 

The low rock wall’s a Sunday’s cobbled, rough analog

for the job of a lyric. Another poor, dirty trick of jagged
edges sat & fit & begat & knit together against
impending weather, its elements; those assumptions
& tectonic shifts. This is all a tenuous gift. Being left
sweaty & strained against the effort of it. But it’ll all go
to shit. Your back grunts with the stoney transit
from there to here & here to there, the air thick
in your lungs as things work themselves into something
akin to a semblance of line, makeshift. Both hands filthy;
knuckles skinned just a bit. There’s a benign spilling
of blood, or whatever muddy suspension of dirt
& leaked sweat oils the slick rift of your skin. Of course,
everything must first start if it’s meant to end. Even
stones, orchestrated; a pointless attempt to rend, to begin
again, to impose an order on unoffending nature & its eventual
upending, or mending, to when it reverts to whatever
it is it intends for itself.

 

 

 

 

Matt Robinson’s new poetry collection Tangled & Cleft, his sixth, was released by Gaspereau Press in Fall 2021. Other recent publications include Sometimes It’s Entertainment; Some Other Nights Just Work (Gaspereau Press, 2016) and the chapbooks Against (Gaspereau, Press, 2018) and a fist made and then unmade (Gaspereau Press, 2013). He lives in Halifax, NS, with his family, and plays a fair bit of beer league hockey.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #463 : Jessica Laser : William James

 

 

 

As I enter the station, my first heart stops.
I begin, chopping the foot of a tree.
Its branches are unmoved by my act.
Its leaves murmur. Peacefully as ever,
I do violence to the foot of a man.
I hear the conductor calling “all aboard!”
If I stumble as I run
If a cinder enters my eye

I enter the station.
The conductor calling “all aboard!”
Stops my first heart stopping
My second heart beating
The foot of a tree, the foot
Of a man. I hear violence calling
Its branches unmoved.
They are moved, I insist.

 

 

 

Jessica Laser was born and raised in Chicago. She is the author of Planet Drill (Futurepoem Books, forthcoming), winner of the Other Futures Award, and Sergei Kuzmich from All Sides (Letter Machine Editions, 2019). 

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan