Poetry

(In Memory of Kildare Dobbs, 1923-2013)

*

I took your word for the durians: so sweet
inside though they stank. I will never eat
one now, I suppose, without you to prod me.
In the cold days when you were all at sea
you wandered among fruit and veg in...

At the dollar store I bought
a bouquet of fake flowers
and what could have been
but somehow (incredibly) wasn’t
It only cost $2 but still
that did not help
                               I planted
the flowers among actual flowers
b/c what else can you...

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
It is sad because of the heart’s condition,
and because the mistress considers suicide.
The narrator tells us so, but do not trust him.
He is unreliable. Perhaps this is the most
unreliable story I have ever...

How the sun shines here in Winnipeg! A total blood
flame. Dem Kanader Konsul conducts a strict examination
to identify ver es iz yoh a farmer. Foams and diaphragm
creams taste so bad, one drinks it in like wine J•after ^...,
use.^...or odd. J:) Winni...

December 14, 2012

I was dreaming when he came into my room,
Alfredo had just agreed to sing and I reached for my glass, my jet curls trembling and my gown, gloves, shoes, all violet:
Libiam ne'dolci fremiti che suscita l'amore,
For love, I tell my son...

I made a diorama of your eye exam from scratch
and sniff stickers, the colonel’s favourite private
stash of weed for shrubbery. Broccoli hedges
my bets with Realism. Gallery-goers caught a rash
of suicides on their car roofs opening night. Art is Art
Garf...

Good god I'm gorgeous, open
on the operating table, so impeccably pink
pearl you could drape me on a hotel heiress,
make a mint. It is a costly transformation:

girl to goddess, curve to cosmic pin-up,
star-strong in a homemade aristocracy.
The ring, I...

[part of a series of Rimbaud and Villon transmutations/translations]

C’est le repose clear, not fever, not languor,
sur le, on the, l’ami, friend, Lamia, send me
more to aim at, come. Le deux extremes of
the room and the cold dream inside it. Du
foyer...

Detectives discovered a divot in the sapling
where the killer tested his garrote,
improvised from baling wire.

He’d been casting for necks when I stepped off
the bus this morning, moist towel of Dramamine
girding my brain. I was sitting in the Travel...