limping tip-toe evolves into how he hip-gyrates on the
sidewalk to Berlin funk
film noir literally bent inside a postmodern split frame
capture the skinny
/ car tune this shiny P
hunker down, hunker in
hunka-hunka, eh Jacqueline?
what do zombies with Bavarian accents have in common with
country music (sung on tape, long after the funeral)?
The Texas two-step.
But not being dead – there’s a diff between decay in the
ground and decay that makes your skin shine, unbathed and unbedded.
wasn’t even 4 times that my nose flaked from the ridge down
he’s
passive-oblivious at
just the right minute
asks
for a word freebie
she says that swinging a penis at Tuesday’s power lunch
earns her a corporate time-out
she says that a lot.
Zombies don’t sleep
no chiseled wood pole
no greying bullet
no salted bones
no hand-carved talisman, or
ornamental cross, or papal water decanting the TV
where do you take your body when you’re no longer heading in
the direction of zero? When you’re getting further and farther from the final
destination? When you identify more than one letter between rather and father.
When skating might preserve handwriting. When you slip in (and so get away with
slipping on) a banana peel. When funny isn’t die. When you do sleep, but only
with your eyelids, not your whole body. When you expect a homoerotic amulet at
the end.
Now a hope-line, dispensing
lollipops, stretches past luck and up the escalator
in Mexico, I swim past first lap, second lap, third lapis
lazuli
hold hands underwater, the sea-foam
refuses to rinse twice
Zombies do breathe, but it’s more recycling than refreshing.
a history of troy – sh, don’t wake the dead
the pub set-up for beer
so not (yet)
equipped
for girl-drink
drunks
a trying tie a limp tie a torn limp a zip, torn from the lip
of a B&W graveyard, cue the yellow balloons
I have mem on my mind, minus the mammory
scarab to meet you
oftentimes, Zombies had been committed to a vegetarian
– some even vegan
–
diet in their
former lives
unlives
is a boat-dock, plunged vertical into the earth, still
phallic?
middle-age mayhem, perhaps. Or a sailor’s cravat, at
half-mast,
half-baked,
half-hearted, half-hour, half-lived
no has-been
no hassle-free
no halfway house
no hablo
n-a-b-l-a, in earnest
because of that tying off, trying out, tie-breaker, and this
B-unsung beaker. A pupil, set in stone, in your gold orifice
more of a speckled cure for chrysoprase insomnia than an
on-spec heartache for healing invisibility. You still don’t believe me,
Jacqueline? Compassionate fertility invites vegan love. We looked him up in the
book under “the Great-comma-Alexander”
we named the relapse a thief’s companion
ahmost
Nicole Markotić is a novelist, critic, and
poet. Her seven books include three of poetry:
Connect the Dots and
Minotaurs & Other Alphabets (Wolsak & Wynn), and
Bent at the Spine (BookThug), two novels: Yellow Pages (Red Deer Press) and
Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot (Arsenal Press), an edited collection of poetry by Dennis Cooley:
By Word of Mouth (Wilfrid Laurier University Press), and a co-edited (with Sally Chivers) anthology of essays concerning representations of disability,
The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film (Ohio State UP). As well, she has numerous publications in literary journals in Canada, the USA, Australia, and Europe. She edits the chapbook series,
Wrinkle Press, and has worked as a book editor for various presses, recently joining the
NeWest literary board as one of its fiction editors.
Currently, Nicole Markotić is Professor of English Literature, Creative Writing, and Disability Studies at the University of Windsor.
the Tuesday poem is curated by
rob mclennan
