Tuesday poem #524 : Emma Rhodes : Day 3 depression or something of the like

 

You ate today you're a freaking superhero.

The circles on the ceiling are close enough to the stars. When you put your head underwater it's like you're at the beach but no one watches you here. In your body and without it let the water fill your ears and feel the echo in the auditorium. Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing the sea and the sky and the inside of your skull so gentle. Ceiling stars melt and become the ocean which is your bathtub: the milky way and crabs, tiger sharks, and phytoplankton. A whole universe softened to listen to. Here in the tub. You have everything you need right here.

 

 

 

 

Emma Rhodes (she/her) is an emerging queer writer currently living on the unceded territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island people. Her work has been published in places such as Prism International, Plenitude, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, Razor Burn, is available through Anstruther Press.

Photo credit: Connor Price-Kelleher

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #523 : Tara Borin : TO THE SLEEP CLINICIAN REVIEWING MY CPAP DATA 600 KM AWAY

 

 

Across the distance, you peer
into my bedroom,

interpret the downloaded data:
significant drop

in the number of events experienced.
Nancy, what counts as an event?

Is it only when my airway folds
wetly upon itself, breath interrupted,

or is it also a child coming into my bed
again, to sleep?

I fear I’ll never break them
of this habit, Nancy.

Do you have kids? Do you also fear
what will become of them  

once the relentless world takes hold?
They grow up

and away, but for now,
my child wakes each night

and slips quietly into my room.
Perhaps it’s the soft sighs

of the machine, pressing me open,
snores silenced.

Did you notice a pause
as I held my breath

to make myself smaller
so that they might fit beside me

 

 

 

Tara Borin is a poet and writer living in the traditional territory of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Dawson City, Yukon. Their debut full-length poetry collection, The Pit, was published by Nightwood Editions in March 2021; their poetry has been anthologized in the League of Canadian Poets Feminist Caucus in Conversation chapbook (LCP Press, 2022), Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021) and Best New Poets in Canada 2018 (Quattro Books), as well as published in various literary journals both online and in print. Tara is the 2022 winner of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes Borealis Prize: Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #522 : Robyn Schelenz : spaghetti

 

 

Spaghetti season, he said with a sigh. We heard it underfoot. You couldn’t tell if it was communicating with the others or just sobbing. Occasionally, Big Jon would stir it with a giant hook, forming glistening piles near the path. Near the Shadow Spaghetti coasts it’s especially intimidating. Little gnomes would use it as housing material, a titmouse would drink red liquid. We would daydream about the gentle burbles of soup season and it would just be spaghetti spaghetti slamming against the windows. Curling around the churches, the skyscrapers. It spilled down chimneys, into overpasses. That’s when you would run for your life, because even as strainers covered the landscape, spaghetti made its way through. Toxic, how it would stick to the walls.

 

 

 

 

Robyn Schelenz is from Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Her poems are at Maudlin House, The Nervous Breakdown, Words and Sports Quarterly and elsewhere. She currently lives in San Francisco, where she works when not doing the bidding of her dog, Donut. Special thanks to Bending Genres and Benjamin Niespodziany for hosting the workshop in which "spaghetti" came about.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #521 : Jon Cone : OVERHEARD IN EASTSIDE LAUNDROMAT

 

 

They invented solace to coincide with advances
made in various tureens of measurement. Yup.

You don’t understand. One thing leads to another.
The cool night air brings a trace of wood smoke.

I keep a diary. I have done so since I was twelve.
I complete one diary then immediately start another.

Gosh the world is swell or maybe it isn’t, maybe
I keep saying only what I’m told: the world is swell.

They perverted solace to coincide with advances
made in varying internments of atonement. Yelp.

You can’t understand. One thing pleads to another.
The cool night hair brings a brace of weed berm.

I seek an aviary. I have done so since I was twelve.
I find one aviary then immediately go toward another.

Harsh the world is swill or maybe it isn’t, maybe
I keep braying only what I’m told: the world is swill.  

 

 

Jon Cone is a Canadian poet, editor, and writer who lives in Iowa City.  He has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His recent works include New Year Begun: Selected Poems (Subpress Editions: Brooklyn, NY, 2022); Liminal: Shadow Agent, pts 1 and 2 (Greying Ghost, Salem, MA, 2022); An Ice Cream Truck Stalled at the Bottom of the World: a collection of plays/written with Rauan Klassnik (Plays Inverse, Pittsburgh, PA 2020); Cold House (espresso, Toronto, ON, 2017).

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan