Easy Street

December 3, 2013

Kateri Lanthier was born in Toronto and raised in St. Catharines, Sudbury and Kingston. Her first collection, Reporting from Night, was published by...

You won’t end up on Easy Street if you wear that hair-of-the-dog shirt.
No amount of rehearsed apology will get you to Carnegie Hall.

We’re bittersweet? Then let me count the ways, I mean, the petals.
O let me plant my kisses all along your neck of the woods.

You say you’ll be my mirror…You’re more like my indoor plunge pool.
When I finally looked you in the eye, sorrow skipped a beat.

7 a.m., looking eastward: Socked in the eye by a rose bouquet.
7 p.m.: My heart’s on ice. I’m buying that sunset a drink.

The furthest thing from your mind is closer than it appears.
The many-navelled mattress doesn’t care which side is up.

And every dinosaur was just a lizard who spoke Latin.
Curiosity killed the Cheshire-Cat. Now I wear his grin.

Asleep, fat cat’s a half moon; skinny one, a new.
Keep me as an illegal pet. My thoughts are actionable.

No accounting for taste? Actually, it’s all too easy.
It’s all too easy to follow your cyber-trail through the bushes.

Ah, teeny birds that slepen al the nyght with open ye…
What are their screen names? Jessica, Jennifer and Ingenuous.

Splendor, Good Cheer and Mirth—two-thirds of the Graces are pleasant?
Give me compelling melancholy. Not butterfly-rose tattoos.

Maple schemes to be a redhead; birch and aspen, to be blonde.
Playing all week in the Pine Gloom Room: Your Melancholy Baby.

The oaks are immobile at eye level. Above your head, they’re frantic.
It’s all on her head? So be it. Caryatid couldn’t care less.

Kateri Lanthier was born in Toronto and raised in St. Catharines, Sudbury and Kingston. Her first collection, Reporting from Night, was published by Iguana Books in 2011. Her poem "The Coin Under the Leftmost Sliding Cup" won the 2013 Walrus Prize and appears in The Best of Walrus Poetry.