Poems

You’d Have to Pay Me Could You Pay Me Enough

You’d have to pay us

Could you pay us enough

To live for a stretch

The Pulley

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Song

Go, lovely rose!

Tell her that wastes her time and me,

That now she knows,

Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.

Unspeakable Acts in Cars

It’s the first day of summer and we’re so happy

To see the sun and the satchel of colours it schleps

All those dark kilometres. The sky is so blue

And the sea is blue and the small islands in the sea

The limpness of a bird’s legs in flight.

The place, the question, the question. 

The place, the interest, the question.

There is the place.

There is what you do in the place.

There is your belief.

world shapers

creation stories are lullabies for grown-ups

they remind us of all the possible ways & means

that worlds…

Dick Pics

Two dicks, sitting in

my daughter’s inbox,

like men without hats,

waiting for any door

to open. 

*

Sighting a stranger’s penis

used to be rare. Remember raincoats?

Radishes

Smoke and ash of November.

A landscape of sediment and char,

lead and gold leaf, mutilated sod

racing on its planetary camber.

On a kitchen table's crude altar

a bowl of radishes is offered

Barter

Life has loveliness to sell,

All beautiful and splendid things,

Blue waves whitened on a cliff,

Chemo Side Effects: Memory

Where is the word I want?

Groping

in the thicket,

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

True Value

The sky was never my court date.

If I died once. If I left the body.

Habeas corpus.

This is not my grave.

The value in a dead woman

I’ll Teach You Cree

with the tip of my spring tongue, ayîki         frog

your mouth will be the web

catching apihkêsis words,                        …

Trillium

the animal in me

is constant.

thirst starts,

hunger answers.

sleep is uncertain,

restless limbs.

in the night,

I hear footsteps.

big ghosts

big ghosts contra

band my diction war

korea's north sees red as

america flags china's chopped limb

british crowns hong kong

cut for duplicity more capitalist than capitalist

First Time Smudge

It takes eight matches, a burnt thumb, and a quick Google search

to light the sweetgrass braid Mom scored for me from an elder

at work. Always use matches, she said. Spirit likes matches. 

Tractatus

The sun gave our shoulder blades ulu-shaped burns, and the sun gives nothing to our sort

I sleep now, and furiously

Clouds excreted shadows on the shoreline, and there were no clouds

dont worry yr hair

              dont worry yr eyes

         dont worry yr brain man th snow is

Day 62

Unless you believe in the eye of the needle

this kind of poverty will never be about material

it won't be about ragged clothing

or mud huts with broken walls

or river blindness

or murram roads

i am graffiti

i am writing to tell you

that yes, indeed,

we have noticed

You Didn’t Fit

You wouldn’t fit in your coffin

but to me it was no surprise.

All your life you had never fit in

anywhere; you saw no reason to 

begin fitting in now.

When I was little I remember

The Trick

Let me be a ''poet of cripples" not

a patient etherized upon a table,

not a brain floating within a body.

In a moment I must be a body

in the place incision produces in a body,

Bury Me in Arabic

“Morning of goodness to you”

— “Morning of goodnesses”

Or add flowers: “morning of roses”

Always multiply the gift—

“welcome” to “two welcomes”

“a hundred welcomes and kinship and ease”

Ode on Solitude

Happy the man, whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

Mariah according to my yt mama

when I try to talk to my mom about what it was like

to grow up surrounded by yt people in the prairies

in the 80s though it seemed like the 50s

she tells me in a so-there tone

Picking Up a Dandelion

Before dawn,

I pick you up,

then bring you closer.

My fingers slowly roll

over your body,

removing seeds attached to you,

free them into the air.

I hear you sigh

Drone

Glaze eyes. Then glaze soul: the dull, dull deadly 

dull faceless work of those killed 

whose names we don't know 

by those whose names we don't know. Drone: 

we can't mourn or condemn 

They Flee From Me

They flee from me that sometime did me seek

With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,

To the Ladies

Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name:

For when that fatal knot is tied,

On the Last Day

I left the protection 

of my plan & my 

thinking. I let my self

go. Is this hope I

thought. Light fled.

We have a world

to lose I thought.

Summer fled. The

Shots Rang Out on My Street Today

Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka!

Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka!

Boyakka! Boyakka! Boyakka!

Shots rang out on my street today

Three Black yoots lay dead

shot inna dem head

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

1

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur

A Thin Plea

(Falteringly)

Our national bird ­– for years – was – as A M Klein said –

the rocking chair

I don’t know what our national bird is now – but my totem bird is

Modestine

We have each tried to read to him, with no success, except for James, 

who read him all of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the

Cévennes

Love poem

The woman I love

braids her hair. She’s Eve

and Eve means breathe, to give life,

my wife, from Eva by way

of the Hebrew havah. At dusk

I unlock her hair

The Cinnamon Peeler

 If I were a cinnamon peeler

 I would ride your bed

 and leave the yellow bark dust

pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

1. wiyâs 

2. pânisâwân

3. kâhkêwak

4. yîwahikanak

5. pimîhkân

Here's how you make pemmican

The Last Laugh

‘O Jesus Christ! I’m hit,’ he said; and died.

Whether he vainly cursed, or prayed indeed,

The Bullets chirped — In vain! vain! vain!

How to Tell If a Poem Is Trans or Not

Look directly at the crotch

Gently wave away all

thoughts about how

you never cared about crotches of poems

before this poet

Consider the subject