#AllMen

the time it takes to

get ready the morning, the blank

stares and climb to the back

of the work camp

bus—what length beard and

the price of peaches

all men and diapers

all men and taxes

on the movie industry

on this day he lets his lover

sleep in and checks the charts

for any let up, any hint

as to where his grandfather went

all men disappear into html

and terms of reference replace

what his outline left

a bar stool and a quick look

to access the field—poetry

and the addressee of all men

hail all men hail

amen to the rink and pitch

filled with rules to keep the small packets

of history hitched to our belts

all men carry the load, the tablet

scored with commands, the backpack

to the outback to feed the burn; all men

play the trumpet to ward off her morning light

on the examining table, the patient does not

meet the doctor’s gaze—a hand placed there

and there and he mumbles something about his

bowel movements and the doctor leans over

to take some notes, her awareness of his

discomfort adding to the slant of her script

all men deserve better, all men deserve less

control, all men serve the other men and their

hate is spilled into the reservoir 

all men are a hypoxic feedback loop

with shells pock-marked by action

films and bleached by the internet

all men believe the anchormen on the news,

all men believe in all men

a certain efficacy that all men share

when ordering food at a restaurant

all men know how to limp their wrists

all men own the pronoun’s pronoun

all men reserve the right

tense moments over the wording of the affidavit—

this monument to the precedent, to the legal jurisprudence,

to the gavel’s symbolic weight, to all the men who line the walls

not all the time was spent in dispute—the rest was

taken to fortify and change the locks

all men spill open like a cracked egg

clickbait

sure, put it out there

the first line 

cleavage, or 

lumbersexual chic

every way you 

look, you

are caught 

by the scream

the gloss of this

trenchant bottom 

line, or

family drama

surrogate, you

sure wish all

this would make

a living, or

climax, or

transition to

origins

the myth of community

So I stepped off the stoop into

culture, expecting something

there to give and receive and

weave with the weft

and left to my own origins,

the crass concepts where I reside, 

the soil I inhaled, hush, but

such was not the case

and skin and gender and

class met me at the end of the street, 

threatened my life, sent

complaints to my third employer,

whispered in jubilant webby groups,

then erased the traces, and eased

to my side to console me.

*    *     *

swirling assessments

mobility, like a drum

beat or open sourced water

experience (stunned into being)

cyclical, transformative, interactive:

all difficult, but not

all outcomes, all relations

a reflexive gaze, bobbing

sunning in the eddies and heavy

oxygenated air (and desire

is extraneous) waves made

a bit like nudity

what is necessary? an igneous

and groundwater core

(ethics?) where you live

and its disconnect from consumption,

where you are, shuddering in syntax

*  *  *

Unidling

begin start the first
the music of care and four
women saying it again
to circle and stop

the prairie nations carrying generational
the way to the start and the eighth

to circle to stop to
turn off the tap
roots rooting further

the women don’t stop
the place and their will

the fraser, the skeena nations
will stand a circle against lines
stopped up with haste

the round the drum in
hands for a turn—
to circle a stop
and a recreation story

toponym 5

the North, a medium-tall scrub

at eye level, the other layers flowing

into and out of

the poem

but for now, the moment

is this line of willows, second-growth

awareness

burned-over areas,

Labrador tea against the thigh

and a rustle of being

scrub birch, black spruce,

listening for connection

the thin tree cover wetland

buzzes away the afternoon drowse

soaks though shoes,

holds you here

toponym 4

contingencies blend and/

or collide and the root structures

                             flex with input

the political economy

of the space is a             constant

negotiation of flow

the energy of a word’s

motion across paths

of light, water,

generosity

the name of the place is

consumed: chewed and changed,

shit on the road,

washed into a gully,

reorganized

in transition moments or/

and ecotone zones the shift is

a turn and sway and knows

nothing of revolution

the needs of this area

will be met

toponym 2

maps lose us
in their          accurate
lines, boundaries of own and
out and here
there and when it was

this separation--the gap
of space and standing
             (a glance around
              for others there too
(and love         love for
you placing yourself
all your relations
defining the next
step, the next
meal          time is land

the measures are story
the place neural
           inaccuracies scrounging for survival

Blockade 4

dawn, prescient, bulldozer      |       the flow of resources go also through our mind                                           |              cardboard boxes and broken crates on fire; three white-tails further down                                  the ditch            |               first, what family’s land               | the road, the pipe, the                             terminal, the tanker, the destined port, the profit—all going away and leaving       |                              resting crouched on the ground, feet planted, listening to the sounds of small creatures,                           the air, the rich smell of hoolhghulh powering the ravine, the trickle of water everywhere,                      the place is not numbers, the place is not yours           |         a tourniquet would seem so                      enticing too                  |               enbridging v.  :   to make a leap in logic that dismisses                            all other points of view           |        “nation-building” the minister’s claim staked          |                         what else is a 1991 Civic for              |                 named Tehwehron, named MacBlo                          Brutalist in 1993              |                  this passive act of war, this bodied word

Blockade 3

|    you were there, hobo, ostrich-rider            |            a knack for being in the wrong place and a disregard for personal safety            |            can’t stop can’t slow can’t give can’t care can’t live can’t recant can’t not can’t             |            by the sign saying ‘watching for trucks turning’, by the sign that something is awry            |            the territory’s family name            |

sub-boreal spruce and balsam: picea speaking outside the frame                        |            the result is not conclusive, but the intervening language moved back south            | what is it  about the interruption of the normal?     |      wild rose cattail soapberry and raspberry

|            the first bulldozer here 1969 under Socreds     |            gravel from Chetwynd

|            asphalt   |            center line            |            is the message delivered or stopped?    | flows and system analysis concluded that the excess was not accounted for                        |   an oily patch on the way            |            the BC Access Office is where you renew your driver’s license            |            a prepositional phase            |   the reason for the media is a place to record the movement of public emotion            |            can’t go, further   

How I Joined the Seal Herd Too

                                                I learned

to let my body give                  it was not I

who controlled the rocks

                                                  Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011)

for an instant                        I thought

of the difference between        air and

without thinking             her flipper

buoyed me                         out of

gender and the institution        was

what                         I forgot

ankle turned       into the fin

I always wanted    to know

something other         than air

float      belly-centered in love

and it was not difficult         this

landlessness                        at the pivot

of our dance                        what matters

what touches      in what language

when the others join                         too

the curbs and spiral stairways

will all dissolve into       swirls

of joy and         breaches

and when I spun          surprised

in the blue-grey     to look

surprised            at her eyes               she

even more   surprised  was

there too       really          really           

the waters were       words mostly

verbs of being       ecstatic     and            

I did not miss                        my groin

at all               sleek we swam         away

iceflows and schools of             ideas

art and movement       through liquid

ease she teases and          swims better

than I ever                        dreamed

another state of         being

intimate with        oneself            water

a wet embrace of care                        full

of promise         loveswirl

and swerve      you            sped

ahead and             I                learning

floundered after       eyes

finding new    colours the shape

of your longing           receding

a moment of doubt         would

you leave        adrift      I wonder

how would I find land again     but

by body knows now      it will not

turn back      arched   

dives                           deeper

where currents meet         and fishes

are rich            we reached       fins skyward

stretching the surface of the

possible           beach pebbles against

skin a sound of                  release

the a waffling wake of        

past lives            land-bound slow

walkers and linear      thinking

maybe you and I        maybe

water riffled around         our discourse

of love bubbling with the             future

my sore ears disappeared      overused

to the inane blathering of news

your paper fell apart        paint ran

books disintegrated into soggy messes of intention

clothes dissolved into            sensation

our house became the many

horizons        became a progress toward

on nervousness 2

whining at the door of

ridiculous requests

hoping that the rash

is not related

stuttering on an explanation

with no question

blabbering on about

herbs and balloons

the century that can

shatter the human myth

the man leaned out the driver

window with his bad teeth

all the reasons are piled

against the wall of the artery i keep forgetting the name of but it is an important one and in real life not at all the neat shape you see on hallmark cards and if i gush will i come clean will the toxins spill out into the river and kill fish eggs aorta it’s the aorta i am thinking of and it constricts when i say i love you but is it the climate my aging cells or true

writing and deleting the same

message 44 times

writing a message and sending

it but before you where were ready

chest pains are a sign hung

on the door saying ‘i am still here’

The Acoustic North

The word “scenic” stuck in the back of your throat
as you trample the mycelium. The word “wilderness”
as the multiple slime moulds cleanse the spill. The
word “refuge” as the word “recreation” is nailed up
beside the highway. The word “cut” as TFL tenures
cease. The word “resource” as the job ad for customer
relations is posted. The word “plastic” blasts through
exterior of everything. The word “tree” caught in traffic
at Robson and Granville. The word “contour” as a
measure of where you are standing, askance, watching
the subtle movements of a place, its inhabitants, the
busy living that is not you and catching the wave. The
words “joint review panel” sets the stage and lighting and
charges admission at the door and chats over drinks at the
hotel bar, tips big.  The word “compassion” sidles up the
scree slope hoping to the catch the human world by surprise.
The word “road” stretches you from the word “here” to the
word “if” and in between the gravel base rolled tight under
asphalt is a desert. The word “Ahbau” from China—a lake,
a street—and the movement between.  The word that drifts
downstream in the spring, charging the vegetable matter and
spurring the heat coming from the south face of a civilization.
The word “progress” squats at the side of the road too lost to
hitch, too broke to imagine, too tired to wish anyone ill. The
word tugs at the sleeve of the uninitiated, saunters into the
reading like an outsider, dumps her packsack in the corner,
turns to you, asks a question about water. The word 
“bedsprings” dumped in the creekbed and taking on moss. 
Whatever stands in place of something else, a metaphor for 
actual contact, laid overtop or sketched in chalk on the 
sidewalk. The word “echo” choosing to return angles 
etched from machines, windfall, lecterns, and corporate 
manifesto. The word “north” carries you back to camp, 
puts an herbal balm on the wound, tries to explain where 
you went wrong.

What the Men Said

divisions take on the character of said

conflict, sliding into the role as if

to say, ‘here I am

apart’ or something larger

the grandfather would say it

in silence and a swift

whack of power comes

with no context

the men stood around

bereft and swinging for

the fences—fame I suppose,

some sort of immortality

caught up in the sting of

knowing the pain could be lost could

be healed                under

here the men said the getting

was good and everything was

freedom which means pain

inflicted quietly, in domesticated ways

means seven of the eight readers

were men and the one woman was

coined in brass and strung out

here the men are libertine, which means

ancient and schooled in the ways of

creeping posts and grooming the style,

the candor of oppression

here the men said nothing has happened

and will never

ungulate blood

the map was inconclusive and where

we were was a matter of

conversation, gesture, weather

the mother was looking not

for us but for shelter from

our knowing

anything

the books were still

the dull red spots in the snow

are not a cipher but the first

thing that a new world would know 

Poem Changes Her State

the gist of the line or a palette

filled with culture, plastic and

the casual violence of progress

and she teases out of the everyday

daylight sparkles of irony or

a watery chop of sarcasm washing

all those states of being entangled with

patriarchy, its formulated use

of her, her skills, hands across

her mouth, hardly making a

mark, but a thieving all

the things she’d wishes into being

hers, art, justice, the wild

grins of kids by the cleaned-up

pond, standing tall, unprecedented

contact across the impossible

would mean a new paradigm for

touch, lightlight, there and safe

the slurry

as ideas move across, a wet

interaction will form, made

of material from the sharpening

mind and the listener--it is important that this

remain in the poem to facilitate

slippage and friction

as the moisture in the language

drops, it is crucial that it be kept wet,

slurry re-applied to the reading act because

it contains all the particles—the pieces and fragments

of thought up until that point in the

text—and so will contribute to the

meaning: fine, keen, ready to work

High rings & harm

by Si Transken


It’s not funny. It’s tragically absurd.

Ugly as an incurable ill that intermittently

recedes below the skin. The sores stop seeping.

It camouflages itself  as non-contagious.

You know you’re old when you’ve sat on

more than a 100 hiring committees – from feminist

grassroots non-profits to hiring committees

for org.coms with planes of snow men in suits.

Usually the hired person has an inside track

to the ear of someone already who knows

someone who is sleeping with someone or

the son or daughter of a someone.

Sometimes the most wrong candidate is chosen.

Appointed because they’re the least disliked, 

minimally offensive  – rather than

that they’re the most skill endowed.

My molars are worn from all the grinding.

Or the person with the obviously

politically correct & stacked disadvantages

gets the position. Stats improve.

No structural or organization change.

Someones make each other shine

& multiply. They fortify each other’s

fortresses. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Everyone’s invited to a barbeque.

Church & club members are keenest

to reproduce their own while being

butter slimy & honey honey sweet

about honesty & transparent process.

I know I’m old because I care only

passingly these days. I see the slides & slithers

of power under the enunciations, behind

the doors, through dozens of disguises.

My eyes hurt from watching all this.

Aware. Aching with ridiculous impotency

I see the lean of the hiring panel into following the

leader who is  the whitest, most Big Daddy,

heterosexual, healthy unflawed body …

Recycle the old boy’s networks.

Now with a Sarah Palin/ Margaret Thatcher, Queen Bee,

Cheerleader girl, handmaiden casting with the boys.

Or a token beige boy’s allowed to pretend to lead.

Old tricks. Old codes. An old dog

I pull my unremarkable tail between my slow legs

with shame for being in the same room –

unable to bark. Or even shit on their shoes. 

Decommissioning the Road In

that part living human made

dammed or cut, a lack

of flow in the elements of knowledge

relegated to charts and boardroom

sludge, tailings and run-off clogged

with the residue of ire

to remove the road’s meaning

from here to there the trans-

port a running over, a spill-

way tread deep into the layered

stories of who and what before

rail, pipe, asphalt, ATV

tracks all to get what’s to be got

out of other concerns duly

noted in the consultation process

that living flow is nonhuman

made and divisible by measures,

an unknown technology and

narrative turn just where the road

thought it was stable, before the new

mythology told it why.