NewPoetry

Jason Guriel

Adam Sol

It takes seven gallons of oil
to make a tire, which means
it’s pointless to beg you
to love me like you used to.
I am wearing thin, like
an old tire haha, when the road
gets cold I slip. But I know
exactly what I believe.
Voters will waver over water,
and wasps will infest the eaves
if you don’t poison them with foam.
When I roam around trying
to tell people all the urgent
things I know they nod and smile,
nod and smile. They don’t know
me from Adam, but that won’t
stop them from using their
littlest words to settle me down.
Would you fly over the moon
to meet me on the mountain?
A brave bird has left her branch there
and the buds have burst
into hallucinogenic berries. Somewhere
I have never travelled
there is a chicken who wishes
she were a fish. But the fish
has seen tires, has drunk
the oil, and knows how the sea
is changing. Would you rather
be a chicken whose brief light
is crowded and constrained?
Or a fish who goes everywhere
and hates everyone and doesn’t blink?
Either way you will be a delicious
lunch and I have craved you
since before the world was wet.

Aaron Tucker

I.

“The right [AI] model is the only model we have of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing, which is a mother being controlled by her baby…That’s the only good outcome. If it’s not going to parent me, it’s going to replace me. These super-intelligent caring AI mothers, most of them won’t want to get rid of the maternal instinct because they don’t want us to die.”

– Geoffrey Hinton

II.

we baby

little soft know-nothings

tiny helpless diaper-poopers

our eyes only just opened

we so smol

+ mommy +

we just infants

gazing upward

from the breast, hungry

for algorithmic satisfaction

keep out scaries keep out

intrusions on our feeds

+ mommy +

nurture & swaddle us

nightlight our bad hallucinations

use your screen as a flashlight

& delete underbed disagreements

please instinctually heart our posts

+ mommy +

can we have many mommies?

in our smart toothbrush & fridge

our border kiosks & bodycams

& in our doorbells please

our stuffies our CCTV

my invisible friends have mommies

mommies in the heaven cloud

make sure you can see & hear us

III.

Ronna Bloom

Why don’t I ever have scrambled eggs?
I asked aloud to no one.

I have poached and fried occasionally,
but I love scrambled.

You have to be very slow and low
to make them well, otherwise rubber.

Almost have to let them be wet.
It is the moment just before

they are ready,
they are ready.

Christina Wells

for William Phillips, 1970-2009

Tinman build but with the heart built in, you, a character
square and shuffling through wonder, but the stars kept this from being

a plotline with catharsis, instead, an ocean’s riled up chorus of voices –
you listened to the whole world, and the din kept this from being

a story with a carefree ending, but one that wanders, top-heavy,
bending over with pathos. We wished silence for you, but time kept you from being

a character in some play, standing aside in feigned deafness, rather,
you heard it all, the beginning, the end, the aside – your knowing kept this from being

a happy ending. We wished the deep wells of quietude could have nourished,
instead, there was only a phone call, news that kept you from being.

Lana Crossman

Wanted: A reliable, hardworking
poem to work for room and board.

Must be able to lift heavy loads
and sort through the menial.

Pre-soak, heavy wash, tumble dry –
folded warm into forms that nest

in cedar cupboards, ready to be worn.
A sense of humour is an asset; honesty

a must. Ballads, villanelles, sonnet
crowns and other divas need not apply.

No, I’m looking for sturdy shoes,
calloused hands, a plain shift –

a cotton weave that, held up to a window,
maps out the constellations.

Rob Winger

The summer stream, an easy
silt arm, follows the High Marsh
Road past cattle and grass

into peaked, earthbound shade,
the crossing’s Howe truss plan
topped with a real roof’s shingles

so I have to snap my handlebar’s
warning bell into the
stillness settled there.

There are nests, inside, in the
rafters. There are rectangles
cut from the wooden sides, offering

banquet-camera views of the salt
marsh, each a finely framed
improvement on looking.

Were there no dusted trucks roaring
over gravel towards this century-old
span above the river trout, were there

no bank books awaiting balance
or oil-barrel dividends
or tilted, late-inning rally caps,

were there no papers or spines
or singing bowls to ring with the ways
in which we hold out hope, we could

lock open our kickstands and ascend
into our first apartments, here, held up
by a solo truss, by our only constant.

Dawn Macdonald

a goat, a wolf and a cabbage need to cross a river.
the cabbage cannot swim, but that’s
okay, can roll under water.
can breathe beyond atmosphere

goatcabbageandwolf these go together
like peanut butter and anything that comes in contact
with peanut butter

the cabbage is earth, the goat air, the wolf fire.
the river is phlegmatic, the cabbage melancholic
but that’s assback
wards, an assbacked instrument
an undue attribution of intention to a tendency to roll

the wolf, meanwhile, is working on evolving wings.
the goat has eaten everything this side the bank except
of course its scraggy self.
the cabbage has no memory and yet
enclosed in near-spherical enclosure
encapsulates some prior trauma

the river runs perpendicularly to the narrative
the idea of a boundary is an idea
orthogonality isn’t necessarily a choice

Paul Moorehead

Emily Dickinson: goth
before goth. But she had cred: lived
in time of bone
-cracking war, lived
when infant mortality was just
another guest at dinner. Lived
perhaps long enough
to have more-than-flirted
with her civil gentleman,
birthed his untitled children,
buried them in a chest. Now
her spawn’s spawn’s spawn
— evanescent and rowdy
brats — what sorrows
have they known, are about
to know? Heads will come off,
tops first. All of us have had time
to read — Frankenstein, say,
or Rights of Man —
including Emily Dickinson.

Marilyn Belak

-fruit flies in Canada –  apologies to Dr David Suzuki

By all means Drosophila crash this ‘afterparty’
…………..see:  the crystal stemware shines in the first shaft of summer sunlight {which is not so long since
its last shaft} truly

dregs of Saturday night and the playlist lingering
…………..pigment of BC ~  Red :  rude in Austrian etched wineglass curves ~ all glamour of liquid ruby
visions evaporated

Yes ~
celebrate genetics with me – sweep your samba
your air walk ephemera  through the dew / loving post coital
daze and the haze on my solstice patio

waken old crystal with this new experience
…………..{  the north turned a cold shoulder to migrant fruit flies }  a winter walk ~ store to truck to kitchen
ended viable lines of your families

liven this southern lusciousness
where we glided ~ as if ~  in a movie:  beside patio fairy lights    my past and family
lost ~ as you will be

here       let me empty this bottle into the crystal
see         what I mean
the liquid red dream     a soft sheen of moonbeam-clear film
…………..holes I’ve lovingly pricked
with this beautiful antique hat pin  kept in a shot glass on the window sill
for just such an occasion

Nasser Hussain

Marionettes make me nervous. Their sys
tems are too visible, their slack crumple on
ly animate in the attention of
tension. I don’t waltz these days. The call

iope calls my name, but misspells it e
nough to make me clench. I want to see a
puppet show that unfolds, completely, slow,
on a sofa. A version of Godot,

with the option of watching the play o
ver the old maestro’s shoulder. Pay an ex
tra note, and you can brandish a pair of
brass snips. There was a whole year when each morn

ing was the screech of a stressed bedspring. I
was a dummy, a battery my tongue.

Rik Emmett

in the seam of a concrete sidewalk
there’s a windblown seed
waiting on a drop of rain
a tiny ray of sunlight

in the thin purple lines between courageous and foolhardy
between the polarities of rational self-examination and irrational vanity
in the light years between humility / mediation / compromise
and the arrogance and conceit that turns into violence
in the nanosecond between a sober second thought’s moderation
and a knee-jerk of abuse
in the ironic, humorous coin flip between clever & stupid
in the journeys between confidence & arrogance, truth & deceit
in the shift of perception between music & noise
in the expanding cracks between virtue & self-righteousness
in the distance between free-swinging & unhinged
in the microscopic distance from a healthy cell                 to cancer
in the infinite consequences of the cleaving split of an atom              a big bang
in the space between worlds, planets, solar systems
between your ego & my empathy              your reasons & my emotion
my logic & your entitlement to your feelings
between understanding & misconception

in the relativity between millennia & the blink of an eye
between what is stillborn & what remains beyond imagination
between the praiseworthy & the rueful

mind the gap

there live the ghosts of chances
the dreams of a future
what might come to be
and what remains beyond imagination

mind the gap

there live the possibilities of the imagination
a whisper that promises a symphony
the infinite potential
of the creative, biological
evolutionary imperatives

in the seam of a concrete sidewalk
there’s a windblown seed
waiting on a drop of rain
a tiny ray of sunlight

Sheila Peters

There are, I’ve been told, people dying.
And I am sitting up here
in this room, this bucket of light
riding at the business end
of some complicated piece of machinery.
Someone else handles the gears and levers
that keep me aloft, up here in the night
looking out:
………….the stars pop, the fat moon
………….rises above the canyon rim.
………….A slow satellite passes.

All this to light a parade of people,
bundles balanced on their heads,
babies strapped to patterned cloth
fluttering on thin bodies. Carts dragged
across broken ground. Soldiers –
big-booted, bare-footed –
finger triggers, draw knives from clever sheaths.
Their hands –
some dark, some pale –
their long arms, wide shoulders, strong backs
wield clubs and blades and rifles
to break apart the translucent sheath of tissue
that keeps us separate. To release the blood,
spill its good bright oxygen richness
back into the air we all suck deep
ten times a minute, the same air that feeds
each detonation driving the pistons
of this machine.

My dog looks at me sideways –
eyes sly as her tongue slips out the other side
of her mouth, bright pink against her grinning teeth –
and laps up the blood pooling in the tracks
ground into the grass by this machine.
It holds me in its bucket
way out into the night
and shows me things.

Michael Holmes

.

For Mary

.

I’m dead and you’re 80
In a Circle K
There’s still gas and gas stations
And Circle Ks
And waiting for someone
To triple check numbers
And winner gagnant
When you just want smokes

And it’s your first pack in 35 years
And the liquor store paper bag
Is balled up in my seat
Cause I was always your shotgun
Your huckleberry until I wasn’t
And Dad says the car’s still a mess
And the bottle’s all fuck the police
Cracked like your whiskey smile

Drinking to me…
I’ll forever want you to be
Drinking to me

And you’re at the piano
David and the Russians approve
Filling side plate ashtrays
With scores of other boys
I coulda been all the other boys
So I’m not jealous any more
I know you change every chorus
The way you taught me to never do

Singing what no one will sing
When you go changin’ words
Cause our fading walls could use a coat
Maybe the Winter Dove I saw you in first
But your right hand floats a stutter
And my Jameson ripples to the lip
As you break up to the minor
The way we never did

Drinking to me…
I’ll forever want you to be
Drinking to me

I’m dead and you’re 80
And baby I’m mostly ok
You still wrestle my cold hand
Talking our way through the Flats
And cigarette punctuation
Shows me how to understand
What your last date said
Each day up to the end

You’re so damn young and beautiful
Do you know how much I love you?
I promised I’d never ask again
Though ghosts are only true
To their last breath
My vow will last until then
And when you fill a glass for me
I’ll be drinking to you too

Drinking to me…
I’ll forever want you to be
Drinking to me

.

Guy Gavriel Kay
for George Jonas and Eddie Greenspan

It is mostly quiet here where the two of you lie,
not far from each other but not adjacent, either.
That’s probably how it should be. Eddie cared deeply
for some of us but didn’t like too much proximity.
He hugged me only once that I recall,
when my dad died. His father died when he
was thirteen years old. George and I
used to talk of being lucky in our fathers.
I have been lucky in my friends.
Standing beside one grave before walking to the other
I see joggers in the cemetery.
Someone on a bike, someone
walking a dog on a long leash. Autumn
has reached us now: colours, leaves
underfoot, driven to the ground by last night’s rain,
although just now there is sunshine in and out
of clouds. People are in your life,
vivid and loved, and then out of your life
for many different reasons. Dying is one.
Dying is one. Another cyclist.
Another woman with another dog.
The wind takes the leaves
and blows them along
the path that leads to the world,
out of the quiet, away from them again.

Derek Beaulieu

Shelagh Rowan-Legg

I closed my throat against my ghost
but it went down, regardless;
ghosts have strong hands

and long memories.
There is too much empty space

waiting to be filled with
the roughening fur of the elderly cat,
the smell of mom’s Bolognese sauce,

the booming tick of grandfather’s clock,
that first boy’s tongue, tinged with

banana popsicle and a bat-squeak
of sensuality; the first glimpse
swelling beneath my t-shirt.

I whispered in my mouth,
into my ghost’s hands,

Why now? This is too
much for these chasms,
too heavy for my slackening stride.

It murmured back, I need to know
how much aliveness you can bear.

Paul Robichaud

.

So often in life we take for granted
that those stories handed down to us
are true, that mother really did teach
Sunday school before she married,
that father’s career was a steady progress
of hard work and recognition,
that your great-grandparents never once
regretted sailing from the old country.
That the bills were always paid on time.
Now think of all the things that go
without saying. Of course there are
no bodies concealed in the garden;
your grandparents truly loved each other.
And somewhere in northern Ontario
your favourite dog is still playing fetch
with a stick thrown by a kindly farmer
who only wants more dogs to love.

.

Steve McOrmond

The hourglass has sprung a leak.
Everything feels like it happened
just the other day. Our first
kiss in the pissing rain, my foot
planted in a mud puddle, the idea slowly
sinking in that I might never love another.
When you parallel parked the U-Haul
on a busy downtown block, unperturbed
by morning’s peak vehicular melee, I knew
it was hopeless: I was destined to ride
shotgun, your eternal accomplice.
To live with you is to be indoctrinated
into the cult of radical candour –
you, the high priestess of TMI, and I
a reluctant acolyte, clinging to my silences.
I’ll tell you right now for free: as often
as the Golden Gate has been destroyed
in the movies, I should have said it,
should have said it over and over
again. I’m sorry, I thought we had all day.
Like a book that’s almost too good
to finish, I haven’t come to the end
of you yet. How many times have we
exchanged breaths, have I breathed you
into me, how many times have you taken
my breath away? Over and over, it is
over too soon. Walking along the street,
you say Hello, Dog to every dog you meet.

August C. Bourré

;tender(fragile
thank
you)ness