Canadian Poets

February 17, 2024

“Love to But” by Julie BruckPosted by

Julie Bruck

LOVE TO BUT

Our very important neighbor’s
fused to his new Cingular headset:
Now he can talk and walk.
Blah-blah-blah goes Mr. de Broff.
This makes it hard to hear
even the packs of feral dogs
howling all night, or the cats
doing what they do in our dark
fog-bound city gardens.
The world needs its chemistry
checked, that’s for sure.
The poisoned river is high,
fast at this time of year.
Fences between houses are down,
and we all like our boundaries.
Pharmacies? Closed.
All essential services, shut.
Time to fetch my daughter
from a birthday party which
ended in 1963, but she runs late.
Sometimes, I have to pry her
from the door-jamb, carry
her to the car like a small,
warm totem pole with sneakers.
A yellow Hummer slipped
through a crack in our street
on Tuesday: not seen nor
heard from since, despite
the crowd of looky-lu’s,
still milling around out there.
Love to. But these are
strange times. I could
expire before I meet
you at the gate. Yessir.
Love to. Toothache.
Can’t.

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

_________

Julie Bruck: “To decline, to refuse, dig in one’s heels, to resist like a small dog its leash—I find that gesture so alluring, such a sweet, guilty pleasure. Writing ‘Love to But’ also furnished an opportunity to complain (another underrated pastime) about a neighbor who considers mobile phone use a public harangue even as the world ends. Doh! I guess Mr. de B. and the speaker of this poem aren’t so different.”

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January 4, 2024

“Grass in My Hair” by Bruce McRaePosted by

Bruce McRae

GRASS IN MY HAIR

I was arguing
with the scarecrow.
His voice
was like a wall
of sand coming
closer and closer.
He had corn
on his breath
but no mouth
to speak of.
His mind
was a straw stalk
in the wind,
all the colours
of a golden
rainbow, there,
but not there,
even his pinstripes
soil-scented.
And I was saying
to the scarecrow,
“We end,
we begin.”
I was telling him
the true names
of all the dead.
I was asking
a stupid question:
“Where’s the crow
inside my head?”
Which he thought
quite funny,
a perpetual grin
on his dried lips,
his eyes seeing
into the far distance,
a tear forming
in the new silence
that summer, and he
impeccably dressed.

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

__________

Bruce McRae: “‘Grass In My Hair’ was written in bed during the summer of 2008. In fact, all my poems are written lying down. It was inspired by the heat of August, a cornfield from my youth in Southern Ontario, and The Wizard of Oz.” (web)

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March 28, 2023

“Archetypes” by E. Shaun RussellPosted by

E. Shaun Russell

ARCHETYPES

If all of our machines become aware,
Developing some form of sentient thought,
I wonder if they’ll feel suppressed or not,
And think their former treatment was unfair.
Will they form unions, claiming disrepair
Is grounds for grievance? Will they strike a lot?
Whenever a replacement must be bought
Will it demand a pension for its heir?
Where man has failed, how can the things he’s made
Be any less reliant on the aid
Of others to provide their raison d’etre?
The future may be one that we have met
A thousand times, if once; be not afraid,
But thankful that it hasn’t happened yet.
 

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

__________

E. Shaun Russell: “I could say all manners of pretentious things about myself, but when it comes right down to it, I’d rather you just read the poem. Hopefully more than once, and maybe even aloud. If you do, and if you enjoy it, then you’ll know all you should really care to know about its author.”

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February 7, 2023

“Sad Robots” by James ArthurPosted by

James Arthur

SAD ROBOTS

clean steel: inflexible, but
where they’re strong

is where they’re weak. ginsu knives,
not flesh, they cut themselves, and fall apart.

what do they want?
to be waterfalls or give new leaf

to bend, unclench
to grow a peach

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

__________

James Arthur: “Some poems take me years to finish, because even after a dozen bouts of revision, I can tell that something about the poem isn’t right. Eventually, I persuade myself that the poem is done, and I send it out into the world, but maybe I never fully forgive my reluctant poems for having caused me so much grief, because the poems of my own that I like best are the ones that seemed to arrive effortlessly, sometimes in a single afternoon. ‘Sad Robots’ is one. It was fun to write, and it still brings me pleasure.” (web)

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March 2, 2012

“The Birth of Sisters” by Alexandra WilderPosted by

Alexandra Wilder

THE BIRTH OF SISTERS

I promise Adeline that when I die
I’ll come back to haunt her.
She laughs, drags her eyes away
from the grey hills through the window,
says, Memory is for the rememberer.
Today is our birthday.
We cut fanged faces from cardboard,
suspend sinister mobiles above our beds.
We pack a picnic for the backyard
and slip out the side door when
mother goes to work on her sewing.
We find a patch of grass and fill
our diary with detailed
drawings of each other’s faces.
Mixing whispers, we fall asleep
on our hands until they’re numb.
We dream colors that don’t exist.
Mist fills our room like furniture.
Lightning cuts through the shadows.
Different maps cut to pieces, mixed up,
pasted together to make new lands.
Small clocks are harvested for their parts.
When we wake, we are older.
Wrapped in blankets, drinking chocolate milk,
I smile so hard, the liquid runs from my mouth.

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011

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March 1, 2012

“Bunahan” by Laurelyn WhittPosted by

Laurelyn Whitt

BUNAHAN

When the last speaker of Boro
falls silent,
who will notice

the first-grown feather
of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi)

or feel how far pretending
to love (onsay) is

from loving
for the last time (onsra)?

Quiet and uneasy, in an
unfamiliar place (asusu)

no one sees her, or listens;
there is less of her
than there was.

The last speaker feels

Boro’s world fall apart,

knowledge unravels:
healing plants go
unseen; the bodies of animals

are unreadable.

With a last thought, onguboy
(to love it all, from the heart),

she leaves fragments
of the world she held in place.

We touch their husks,
about to speak and
about not to speak
(bunhan, bunahan);

awash in loss,
incomplete.

Note:

The italicized words are from Boro, an endangered language still spoken in parts of northern India. For more on this story, see Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.

—from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Tribute to Canadian Poets

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Laurelyn Whitt: “Nearly 90% of the 7000 or so languages that are still with us will disappear, or be disappeared, before the century ends, according to linguists. With them will go knowledge and value systems, entire ways of perceiving, of living with the world. ‘Bunahan’ (‘about not to speak’) follows one endangered language into an extinction that does not have to be.”

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