Poem’s Commodity Fetish

in the reading

room or ancient tomb Poem

dreams of a well-wrought

yearning for something

more stylish or tricky

to show your friends or

ad lib in front of a modest

audience in that quiet café downtown

although at the time Poem

was disappointed with her purchase:

the seams hasty, the graphics

uninspired, an oily flavour . . .

sometimes the transaction is meant

to frustrate, like a rebellious

daughter or mid-life crisis tattoo

the text of which Poem now

carries on her left thigh high

enough to be her own

I can’t tell what is

there and there is no use

begging

Poem and the Nothing Ever After

when verbs to be are

reclining not even wanting

to work standing well away from the road

where no traffic moves and

an inconsistent hum comes

from somewhere sourceless

to complicate contemplation

a stillness longing into nothing

more and narrative stalled

stuttering to a stop so the

road’s servitude isn’t one any more

postmodernism slips into the reeds

covered in mud called courage and carrying

succulents for the unstable winter

and everything moves

an inhuman vibration or

responsive leafy listening verging

on an apocalypse of knowledge or

when the machines and plots

desist, it is what is left

blandly undefined and bushed

what is left is a rift—ahistorical

and clustered around a faint

filtering disorder called shelter;

you and I live there for years until

the wild men came with weapons—

after that no records were kept . . .

what is left is considered

faulty verse, a hack’s

ruinous reinvention of negative

culpability—‘git outta here

ya damn tree-hugger, damn

hippy—build something or die!’

Poem Considers Masculine Profit

penniless Poem does not look

well in this light, stark and industrial

dawns with loud semis coming

and going from the factory outlet

behind, a swamp squawks and chitters—

it is unclear whether it pre-existed the mall

or was moved there 

Poem is waiting for a ride or something

like epiphany and is attracting stares

the guy across the way selling

burgers and whistling at a vague idea of salvation

why does Poem always end up out of it?

out of sync? out of fashion? out of the way?

pacifism ripples from the untoward

breeze, an ease, a conditional spark of

not knowing why or who to demean, not

wanting to own any of those favorite terms for torture

commercial driving love into mouths, a kind of self-
immolition and Poem exists, stubborn leaflets crumpling under
the boots of the pornographic entrepreneurs
consolidating an unsustainable hate into
something all the stakeholders can approve

jeez, Poem thinks, presses a thumb to his
pulse—if I am not a live man then I’d better
find some new seeds—not a plot but an area—

something simple, some camouflage, some cache

on the road to the downsized pulp mill

past the oxeye daisies, five or ten
in a clump in the gravel dust
piling on the leaves and petals

alder and cottonwood saplings
shining in the too-hot sun clinging
to the cutbanks and riverbanks
and the road’s cracked asphalt
gleams with the residue of tar and metal

the sound of the nechako is lost in the blare
of trucks and the glare of the windshields
pass along the far shore where a few
young pines survive and lean over the railway tracks

a bald eagle might pass over but not today—
if there are salmon they would have snuck by
months ago—so crows play in the hot
updrafts and a boy pedals down to look for
saskatoons and room to think of something new

Sea Otter Catches Colonization Under a Rock

Still salty Salish air in fall
and the small flounder crunches
between her teeth

The otter numbers are up
not like stocks but spirits

She sits on a rock munching
the discourse called trade

that Spanish / Russian / British squeeze
in the straits when skins
came off with a sick sucking noise

Globalization dribbles off her pelt,
her nonchalance, her pregnant belly,

this counter-colonial moment in
English Bay, the tide just turning

her satisfaction in being

the largest service centre

perfectly situated at the crossroads of two major highways and two
water ways also the junction for

the alaska highway

786km from

one of four secure custody centers in it both open and secure custody based

one of those gateways you first visit on business

also a staging centre for mining and prospecting

currently experiencing

bolstered by a body of reporters from 100 mile house through smithers

a leader in all facets of business and intends to be northern 's fastest growing call centre market

a great place to

currently experiencing enormous growth and improvement

located in the center of a vast

with many assets

an excellent choice for professional customer service

the perfect place to retreat after a hard days work

now home to 416 low

a northern capital

a bustling of 80

changing a vibrant of 70

located at the confluence of the fraser and nechako rivers

located at the confluence

about 800 km from

located in

known as a northern

located in the north central region of at the junctions of highways 97 and 16

the fourth largest in

"right in the middle of it all"

not any worse than the rest of the province in this category

a manufacturing and distribution center for an agricultural and lumbering region

a hub of activity offering visitors an

only local rival for impressive architecture

becoming one of the west's most popular snowmobiling destinations

home to approximately 65

the largest centre in our region

not allowed

ideal for those who utilize public transit or who

located in central approximately 496 miles from

the last of twenty

the primary trade and service area of 110

the regional service centre for post secondary education

directed to

located on a spur of land at the confluence of the fraser and nechako rivers

located right in the middle of and the regional centre of business

located about 400 miles north of vancouver on the fraser river

the voice for volunteerism in

all about

here

one of the cornerstones of this strategy

the only one of its type known to be preserved or to survive in canada

one of canada's investment hot spots

pleased to announce that a family has been selected for our first build

the main of the central interior

bad

known as the northern capital of a regional icon and a jewel in the crown of

fast becoming the jewel of

conveniently situated in the downtown core

what it

for all those reasons

dependent on the logging industry for its economy

a mid

the getaway that has it all

a cozy of 60

a sports persons parade

very excited as another prestigious event comes to our

in the heart of northern

the major transportation hub

situated at the confluence of two rivers and surrounded by extensive boreal forests

service driven

of the opinion

simply not true

The History of Listening

nearing this heft, nearing
tides and lamplight and
accumulated heirlooms placed
in a row, tambourine-like, against
the pressure of outside, out
of hearing, struck instead
by the riotous friction of cells
on cells, hunger, tissue rustling
just to the left of profound—and
silence is cradled in your impossible mouth
a wordless o obediently biting
off a reply to propriety, a vital levity
in the parabolic viscera, those homey
keys to absolute knowing, knowing
the space your voice should be going,
should be a nostalgic scent in the fabric,
should be resolutely circling the already known.

Downtown Revitalization

therapy for the rescued
handouts and a reconnection
to the river, assessments
of who is here and why

the heights harbour such
tax relief

the car no longer keyed
conversations begin on George St.
where none were before

it begins partly in a fourplex
on Spruce where awareness
is assembled on corkboard

it begins with that early contradiction:
love for the violent place,
the men who left, the women
who took over

like millworkers and treeplanters
eyeing one another at
Second Cup—a culpability
and an invitation over—
the first question being
‘what’s going on out there?’

Walking with Ken

down Victoria, or up the hill
through crescents to Central, the powers
tilted away from speech,
each of us looking at the poem
before it is and then
rethinking why

Cranbrook Hill by the Dakelh name
and the cutbanks surround
the cupped hands of the city
taking and giving
while Ken speaks of outside, Blackwater
where the mountains are reflected
into uncertainty and systems
begin to inform the masses

I would not want to be
anywhere else but walking
with Ken, thinking about how
to stay and not betray

—if we were on a lake
it would be in a strong, well-made
canoe unlike the one
I leave in the yard unwritten