Poems

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

Rejected Text for a Tourist Brochure

“I saw my land in the morning

and O but she was fair”

- M.G. Smith, “Jamaica” (1938)

I

Come see my land

Come see my land

Song to Celia

Drink to me only with thine eyes,

And I will pledge with mine;

Or leave a kiss but in the cup,

The Ayes Have It

When I think of Trayvon Martin, I think of Emmett Till,

             when I think of Emmett Till, I think of young, black men in the South,

Eight

The trick to building houses was making sure 

they didn’t taste good. The ocean’s culinary taste 

was growing more sophisticated and occasionally 

Last Visit

Now I set out across a minefield,

space having taken all I owned, I’m starting over

from a point where every pebble may explode

beneath my shoe and the flowers blaze up

behind my body as I gasp for air,

The Charge of the Light Brigade

I.

Half a league, half a league,

Half a league onward,

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

On My Tongue

Bismillah is my first memory.

I became a bird in the Qur’an

at hardly eight years old.

I opened the dark green cover

and revealed the slippery

From all you can is the best you can

i once shoved my foot through glass

getting to know my own anger

its patches of stupid

bloody love

stress is just a socially acceptable

word for fear

The Problem With Being a Box Too Small for Its Contents

Love, you ask too many questions.

Let’s agree: we are whole

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Boy Remembers in the Field

What if the sun comes out

And the new furrows do not look smeared?

This is April, and the sumach candles

Sonnets from the Portuguese 43: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

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

To His Coy Mistress

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris

When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car

the policeman was waiting. Gun raised.

I use the past tense though this is irrelevant

in Daniel's language, which is sign.

Moon in Khmer

You are light

when the sun is punched out

and darkness reigns.

You are the antidote

to what came before:

black blood, black heart,

hands tied, kneeling before

a ditch of human bones.

Newfoundland Sealing Disaster

Sent to the ice after white coats,

rough outfit slung on coiled rope belts,

they stooped to the slaughter: gaffed pups,

Guanahani, 11

like the beginnings — o odales o adagios — of islands

from under the clouds where I write the first poem

its brown warmth now that we recognize them

from “Road Shoulders”

power lines held by birds

of prey the hostile expanse above

ditches teeming floral invasive

wayside fleurs

late summer the shoulder sang

holds breeze by

The Poet

Out of the deep and the dark,

A sparkling mystery, a shape,

Something perfect,

Ella Josephine Campbell

Slim, slight. Sinew and bird bones.

Cords of her hands like spruce roots.

Came from Ship Cove to Crow Gulch

with little more than the child inside her,

landed in a small shack flanked by

On Identity

it’s hard to feel power from my ancestors when i don’t know 

who they are, 

where they come from, 

what their stories are

we share blood

blood shares memory 

Tide

Would I have seen her?

The tide tugging her gently past

the Comfort Inn; houses, tall and gabled,

To a Mouse

On Turning up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,

O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!

Perennial

For thirty-one years, my mother tried not to miss her. Every week, 

a little water or the trickle of a few ice cubes

dropped

in black earth. Years back, in the muck of Toronto, April,

it’s rank, it cranks you up

it’s rank it cranks you up

crash you’re fracked you suck

shucks you’re wack you be

all you cracked up to be

dead on arrival

overdosed on whatever

excess of hate and love

RAINBOW ROCK-CLIMBING CLUB

I’m a gecko on a wall 

that simulates a cliff 

with rainbow grips 

I’ll touch any colour 

that’ll have me 

midway is high enough 

wary of emotional 

FLOOD

The hallway is an empty

riverbed, smooth and barren.

At three o’clock classroom

doors open like dams.

            Gullies of teens stream

out, to become one

Common Magic

Your best friend falls in love

and her brain turns to water.

You can watch her lips move,

My Papa’s Waltz

The whiskey on your breath

Could make a small boy dizzy;

But I hung on like death:

Leonardo DiCaprio

My ex-boyfriend got measurably more attractive

and all I got was a dad bod.

Leonardo DiCaprio has a dad bod,

and for whatever reason this is reassuring to me.

Leonardo DiCaprio finally won an Oscar

For You Shall Be Called to Account

The ancestors of everyone I’ve let into my body

are gathered in a small room with one window,

no lights. Yes, the room is crowded. Yes, there

are no chairs. Yes, they are talking. Why are we

Spacetime

We Twitter, Tinder, Tumblr through eternity. Loquacious

text messages flit from fingertips, waves of data spill

through our skulls. Every cm² of oxygen overflowing

On the Last Day

I left the protection 

of my plan & my 

thinking. I let my self

go. Is this the hope I

thought. Light fled.

We have a world

to lose I thought.

Summer fled. The

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

1

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur