RHONA MCADAM AND SWEET WATER AT THE POETRY PARTY

Rhona McAdam
BY THE GLASS
Free for the taking

through all my childhood,

crashing into glasses bouldered with ice,
poured thickly from the sides of plastic jugs,
the unremarked and neglected

sentry at the top of place settings,

sweating on formica,

seized to cure fits of coughing

or moments of spice, replenished

unasked and endlessly.

When the costly bottles came,

in thalassic greens and fluvial blues,
the taps still turned for the frugal,
and we got what we paid for,

tepid, swirling with mist, fragrant
with swamp, or sold for 10 p a glass at
a parsimonious caff in Cornwall.
We drank each chlorinated drop
and spared the tip.

In New Mexico restaurants,

cards propped on the tables

invited us to value even this, the stuff
of dishpans and swimming pools,
while all afternoon in the Hilton

the self-flushing toilets

thundered their copious refrain

in unoccupied stalls.

A friend has returned from Africa.

We sit on the beach in clothes the colour of sand,
watching clouds gather

on the undrinkable blue horizon.

Sweet Water editor Yvonne Blomer

Rhona McAdam's poem is from the anthology Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds, edited by Yvonne Blomer. It was meant to be launched March 18, 2020. Republished with permission from Caitlin Press. Copies may be ordered from the press.

ERIN WILSON AT THE POETRY PARTY - AND A GIVEAWAY

Erin Wilson's first poetry collection, At Home with Disquiet, was released with Circling Rivers Press on March 24, 2020. She would have been sharing this poem in Sudbury, Ontario, the day the first case of COVID-19 was announced there.

Erin Wilson
MARE

    “When is it we come to the realization that all things are wandering away?”
                                        Charles Wright

i.

I am driving by, watching.
Things like this always happen
inside the momentum of other things.
Time is like a waterfall,
someone says.

ii.

In the centre of a green pasture
four corpulent mares have gathered
in a circle to confer.
What they are discussing
is the listless colt
lying like a sable fur
upon the dew-lit grass.
One mare, probably the mother,
is stomping her hoof,
tearing up divots of soil.
Certainly, she thinks,
if I translate this angst
through this body—!

The four of them stare,
one unblinking eye
staring into the green eye of earth
which doesn't blink either.

This is how my grief for you works.
This is how it changes nothing. 

Erin Wilson offers free Advance Reader Copies to the first three writers/readers who write to her at thetinyleaf(at)gmail(dot)com

TYLER PENNOCK AT THE POETRY PARTY

Tyler Pennock writes: This poem is the opening to Bones - and is a part that took me quite some time to settle on. The book itself is set in winter, and I really wanted to capture the season in the first poem. I remember the image of snow in "the dead" by James Joyce.  Don't get me wrong -- I've never read it. But I remember being told about it by a former partner, some time in 2002. He described it with such detail and admiration. At the time, I, too was listening to him, such detail and ... admiration. 

Given how I write, I thought snow would be the perfect vessel for the opening of this book. What I love about snow is its gentleness, and beauty. It signals the death of so many things, but can still hold light above a forest floor (the same way some flowers do). This, the circle-nature of seasons, relationships, and memory are all brought forward in this poem. A wonderful start, and one I'm very proud of. 

Tyler Pennock

from BONES

Under the moonlight

the softness that night gives us –

    the earth rising to meet

    in snow, or the glow of trilliums

where there is enough sound in a breath –

in here

I speak

gently step

    and story-weave

sending out a thread of me           

like a foot’s condensation

drying on a summer floor

hoping the memory of me

    survives

        in the eyes of others

I’ll speak

of blood

and wounds and beauty

in terrible things

the way the wind pulls a thousand leaves

    down an empty street 

and when they settle –   

        we look up

        to trace the direction of the wind 

    *

Tyler Pennock was set to launch Bones at First Nations House, University of Toronto May 8 2020. The launch and a reading scheduled for April 15 in Toronto have been cancelled. Copies can be ordered through Brick Books.

AMY LEBLANC AT THE POETRY PARTY

 Amy LeBlanc writes: The Calgary launch of my debut poetry collection I know something you don’t know (Gordon Hill Press) was meant to be on March 31st, 2020. I’ve also had to postpone an Edmonton event in April and I will probably postpone my Toronto launch in May.

Amy LeBlanc

The storied life of Grace Poole

    She dangled striated 

    scarves from the window

    rattling her head as I 

    held her waist.

He told me to keep her 

quiet, to keep her safe, compliant—

this significant 

paranoia 

that she might be

    vaulting

    purging

    dancing

    like red fiber from rafters. 

    She tells me

    my hair reminds her 

    of a fox. My brush is 

    a signal to enemy lines: 

    her lips parting

    on a stolen glass

    of honey soaked wine. 

She and I 

watch the tree, 

as it splits and succumbs

in the orchard, a slit 

where the tree was licked

with a voltage charged tongue.

She says that it will never 

be the same again.  

We are both behind

the lock and chain, but 

I can abscond 

to the halls and gates.

    She lingers behind

    the latch— 

    her fingers

    entwined in a lock 

    of my red hair. 

We are curious bedfellows

with sweetness on our thighs,

    the topographical curving

    of bones and banks. 

She is hers and I am mine.

I will never ask 

for more than the chill 

of her hands that cool me 

until I drown.  

    She won’t jump with someone 

    to hush the light. 

Buy Amy LeBlanc's book directly from Gordon Hill Press or these bookstores:
Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages on Kensington

LAURIE D. GRAHAM AND SWEET WATER AT THE POETRY PARTY

Laurie D. Graham
ANTLER RIVER
Pigeon waltzing the trail on one foot and one little nub. 
Mallards and their escaped domestic kin and the bright,
rasping horns of Canada geese in false spring, in glacier-
turquoise water. Hundreds and hundreds of sharps sinking 
into the banks. Nests of clothes. Tents. Tarps. Broken trees 
helped down the banks with chainsaws. Water rainbow-slicked. 
The salt-spackled ground. The farmed transplants, the white-
bread crumbs. Up the bank: courthouse, hockey arena, 
brutalist government tower, city museum, wind.  
               Down here, the fork in the river. The sacred.

Laurie D. Graham's poem is from Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds, edited by Yvonne Blomer. Republished with permission from Caitlin Press. The anthology was meant to be launched March 18, 2020, at Munro's Books in Victoria, BC. The launch was cancelled. Copies may be ordered direct from the press.

FOUR POEMS FOR FOUR CHILDREN, PLUS ONE: EMILY GROSHOLZ

Fragment of a Susie Osler ceramic plate

Snowdrop

Snow fell so early this year, just after Allhallows,

We never finished the ritual of raking clean

Livid grass and cushions of stricken moss.

The yard's still matted with leaves, oak, maple, walnut,

Visible once again as the snow recedes,

Tatted lace unravelling, going wherever the snows

Of yesteryear retire to, heaven or hellward.

Under the mat of crisscrossed mahogany

And black gold crusted with ice, one snowdrop rises.

She stands already in the outmost bed, bordering

Woods, though it is only February, turned,

Dear Mary-Frances, less than a week ago. I laid

The coverlet of leaves aside and there she was,

Furled on herself and bowed, but blooming hard,

Sober, exquisite child of an uncertain season.

JAMI MACARTY AT THE DESERT POETRY PARTY

Jami Macarty

Desert Distances   

From vine, devil’s 

claw                from coyote

jackrabbit            Gila monster 

from its inching        from jojoba

slough wind            from owl

bone pellet            cactus wren

from the darkling hollow 

of its saguaro nest        cactus arms 

raised in surrender        there 

she steps through a door    creosote 

                volatilized by rain

Jami Macarty was going to launch The Minuses on March 22 (Tucson) & April 19 (Vancouver).

Order her book here

BRIAN BARTLETT AT THE POETRY PARTY

Brian Bartlett

From Safety Last

 (inspired by the silent-screen films of Harold Lloyd)

  Two men fight

on a heap of rope until,

   tangled, they fight the rope

                 He keeps all he has

            from their one meeting—

                her dog’s biscuit-box

   From sleeping-car curtains

horrors of the dark—

  strangers’ jutting white feet 

              After the mouse-trap

            bites his searching fingers,

              he eats the cheese

   Silent movie—

the shy stutterer

   is spared sound 

                After she’s named

            the stranger Trouble, she says,

              “Trouble, don’t change”

Brian was going to read from his new Gaspereau Press chapbook at The Words & Music Show: It Will Be Summer in Montreal Sunday, March 22.

Copies of Safety Last can be ordered here