Tuesday poem #294 : Cath Morris : New World Order

I’ve noticed lately how fast things are changing

the First and Third Worlds merging so that

it’s all becoming more streetish,

busier, more stuff, less quality

dirtier, messier, more exotic,

more carnivale,

less village square

heated up,

not so cool

less elegant,

less fair

yet I suppose this means

more sharing, caring

melding of hearts

and minds

until we all melt

together

on the sidewalk,

like butter;

the hopeful side of this, though,

and why we all love Korean Psy

is the new sense of each other

the internet has bestowed

‘we the people’ not just North American

but like-minded brothers and sisters

linked across the world

in this sense

the unsettling thing about the merge

is that this new crowded high street

shows even more graphically how

the camps are divided, not just by religion

but by money and motive

and one is either fighting for right

with web-melded hearts and minds

or worshipping material wealth of all kinds

(the dead disease global trade has spread across the world

and threatens to wipe this experiment out altogether)

the Toltec prophecies tell us, however,

that the Sun is pure intelligence

and Virginia Woolfe says “all the world is mind”;

we are all creating this dream of Earth together

and if we don’t stop the destroyers

we’ll keep filling up the streets with human waste

until we all melt together

on the hot sidewalk

like… sizzling bacon rinds….

Ottawa-born long-time Vancouver resident and member of the TADS poets group, Cath Morris has been writing stories and poetry since she was a child. Before her introduction to the Vancouver literary scene, she was a journalist for The Georgia Straight and VAM (Vancouver Area Music) Magazine. Besides her chapbook, Venus & Apollo, from Pookah Press in 2009, Cath’s poetry has been published in TADS, Urban Pie, and The Capilano Review, as well as online poetry journals, Ottawater.com (3^rd, 8^th, 10^th, and 11^th Issues), Poethia.com, and Bywords.ca. Her work was later published in Coach House Press’ special edition anthology for Poet Laureate George Bowering’s 70^th birthday, 71(+) for GB, and Corporate Watch UK’s 10^th Anniversary Anthology (2007) in Oxford, UK. In 1998, director, Irina Trouchenko, staged the experimental one-act play, An Artist’s Dream, based on the eponymous poem and others by Cath Morris and Chris Turnbull for the UBC Summer Stock Festival at UBC’s Chan Centre. Besides Venus & Apollo, Cath has a second chapbook coming out with Pooka Press on September 9^th of this year (2018). Cath’s early self-published chapbook, After the Fall, awaits publication. More recently, Cath’s work can be found in the west-coast poetry anthology, Make it True: Poetry from Cascadia, 2015 (Leaf Press, Nanaimo, B.C.). Cath works as a television researcher/writer.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #293 : Catherine Cafferty : Coupling constellations

The green leafy gaze, a loon on

the lake.

By night mice in a dish, when the torch

is on. And squirrels want fireside.

I cut into the tip of my finger the first

day, need layers when I enter the

water.

A death among reeds, we watch

at nothing for nearly an hour.

The dragonflies multiple by midday,

prism-like water below us.

I dream of the canoe rocking, arms

a tilted windmill, yet word is I’m working

little.

The moon casts over the islands tonight,

black pitch made sun white by tomorrow.

This cedar and soil portage, now useless

with a map of water.

Goggled liked a child, survey the moss-

covered stones, a fish.  I swim.

Catherine Cafferty is a poet living in Brooklyn, NY. She holds a BA in literature from McGill University, an MA in English from San Francisco State University, and an MFA from The Iowa Writers' Workshop. She currently is the co-director of literacy for The Partnership for Inner-City Education in NYC.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #292 : Lauren Haldeman : LETTER HOME ON THE THIRD DAY

Listen, I am so fast.

I am fast. Listen, the team’s mouth moves

from across the field: hustle. Blood-

shot, their mouth is saying

it is out of bounds. I have

to pay attention. Center half-back

and their mouths

are letting out long lines. Blood-

shot, the field blurs, the field it

rushes to their mouths. If I look

& won’t have missed it, I will have paid attention.

Many times are lost in time

beneath the dark red-clay. So they told & the joke goes:

he threw a white stone in

a red sea. The oarsman had a white stone

& he threw it in the sea. When it comes back

to his hand what color will it be?

Center half-back, their mouth moves.

It is all gums.

They know what they are saying.

This time out-of-bounds blood-

shot and I didn’t pay attention.

Coach has his playbook, it is

red-streaked. His mouth is where

the cardinals are leashed. It is a stone’s

throw away, and believe me, really:

red is the pigment of cardinals unleashing.

Center half-back says hustle back.

I will go back.

I will hustle back.

They know what they are saying.

I am fast. I am so fast.

My legs, they blend and kneed.

Coach’s playbook is pouring something.

Coach’s playbook is in his hands.

He washes his hands off, he gets

it off. Blood-

shot, I am so fast, on a breakaway.

Out-of-bound, I am so fast,

the pigment it’s all over.

Lauren Haldeman is the author of Instead of Dying (winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry, Center for Literary Publishing, 2017), Calenday (Rescue Press, 2014) and the artist book The Eccentricity is Zero (Digraph Press, 2014). Her work has appeared in Tin House, Colorado Review, Fence, The Iowa Review and The Rumpus. A comic book artist and poet, she has been a recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, the Colorado Prize for Poetry and fellowships from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. You can find her online at http://laurenhaldeman.com

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #291 : Nicole Steinberg : Gag Me

Under a grim mobile of teeth I play

a trick on the seeds. My gummiest parts

held together with royal icing & a prayer,

I trade dharma for diarrhea, every hole

tart to the taste & bleeding fog—foe-ridden,

I gag on the desolate princess bones life molts

& leaves behind. I abandon the smug party,

sober yet somehow not sobbing, hollowed

by a smooth coil of grief, some husky fucker’s

lustrous missile searching for egress via my chest.

How do I unfuck my habitat if I dwell inside

the crumbling curve of a large intestine?

In a place where nothing grows

I must always be kind to women.

Nicole Steinberg is the author of Glass Actress (Furniture Press Books, 2017), Getting Lucky (Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2013), and several chapbooks, including Fat Dreams (Barrelhouse, 2018). Her work has been featured or reviewed in the New York Times, Newsweek, Flavorwire, Bitch, and Hyperallergic, and her poetry was selected by Penn State's Pennsylvania Center for the Book for the 2016 Public Poetry Project poster series. She's the founder of New York's EARSHOT reading series and she lives in Philadelphia. Find her at nicolesteinberg.net.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan