2/20/2021 POETRY: CASSANDRA CERVIRESTORATION the morning sky behind my office building was a fading orange: an old painting before restoration, colors hidden behind clouds it was the type of orange I could almost taste: the cloudy memory of my Nonna’s knotted knuckles peeling oranges in the golden hour glow of lazy summertime afternoons the type of orange I could almost hear: the distant creak of my Nonna’s backyard swing’s rusting hinges I walked through the orange haze into the office, where there were no orange tastes or orange sounds just walls too white to hold anything at all when I left, the sun was long set, its morning colour, already a memory I’ll never quite restore. THE OTHER SIDE we fell in love outside legs swinging out of tree branches whispering wonderings about the ancient history of its bark, about the long-lit office building windows on the other side of the river that carried ducks and swans and geese and tissues and plastic bags and empty vodka bottles and fast food trash our first date we snuck onto the city train tracks one side overlooking the sunlight-adorned stream, the autumn leaves falling like slow tears the other side overlooking a parking lot we walked through a forest with no path beside ourselves with our discovery chattering about how more people should fall in love outside until we came upon a deer eyes wild with panic, limbs entangled in plastic Halloween decorations Cassandra is a Strategist at a marketing agency in Toronto, having graduated with an Honors Specialization in Creative Writing and a Master of Media from the University of Western Ontario. She has been published with eMpower Magazine, The Feminine Collective, Beautiful Losers Magazine, Pip Magazine, The Impressment Gang and Synaerisis Press. While studying at Western, she published a literary and arts zine to raise money to support the International Planned Parenthood Federation. She currently serves on the editorial board for Room Magazine and is always looking for new ways to connect with and serve her community through the arts. Twitter and Instagram: @cassandracervi
2/20/2021 POETRY: RONNA BLOOMTHE FUTURE I saw the icons of my generation trashed, pounded, run over. Sunlight, Madge, we were soaking in it. That box that held our Kisses was flat. Lifestyle came undone so that life was hanging on by the grate and style underfoot. What happened is everywhere. "The future is in plastics," said the man in The Graduate, and it is. One night last century, I dreamt I sat on a high wall, an open book on the ground and the sea rose. Be careful the book! I called. The water came anyway. What is precious and who cares and how much? To each her own footwear in the apocalypse. It’s not just the litter, it’s the latter. But some people notice. Someone took these pictures. In Australia, fire eats the houses. In Venice, someone's couch was swept into high water. Tourists looted the Vuitton store and swam away with the goods. Since Tom Waits isn't dead I call out. What am I seeing? Misery’s the river of the soul, he says. Everybody row. The young are out mopping, because there's no school when there's no school. And the old, well, it doesn’t matter how tired and dazed you are when you’re up to your knees. All you can do is wait. The tide will turn. Sunlight. The real thing. Until the next siren. Fire and water and fire and so on. Sisyphus that old trooper. Sisyphus is us. I SAID TO THE SUN, "Good morning, I love you. But please can you also go to Venice?" They are drowned from exhaustion, mopping up. 'We are down on our knees', their mayor said. And as if too much feeling added 'but only when praying.' The sun was not political. She said, "I’ve been here since the beginning but I’m not alone. The sky is my company and the ocean is riled and there is unholy steam from the ground. I should stop my breathing in California, Australia, across the Amazon they don’t want me. The earth is my mirror. Cracked and dark. Or soaked. Wherever I go, I am too much, and not enough." And the sun shone weakly. Which was not enough. Didn’t know if she was coming or going and she was both. A voice said, "remember, when your Republic really gets into trouble there is only one way out: SAY YOU'RE SORRY THEN BUILD A SPECTACULAR CHURCH, GRAND ENOUGH TO CATCH THE EYE OF THE MADONNA! It works!" I looked at the watercolor of Salute Cathedral built by plague survivors in 1631. That floor I'd stood on with its mesmeric tiles. Today, locals stream in for Festa della Madonna, light candles. If I were down to my last pennies of hope, would I fling one into a flood and make a wish? Throw a coin and see which side faces up? Look there? My eyes are open and on the sky. What we love cannot save us. The sun is down now and searing the other side. And I am writing from the present to say, "Goodnight, dear friend. I hope you find some peace tonight, though you turn and turn." THE NIGHT THE RHINOS CAME The night the rhinos came we had nowhere else to look. They were not accusatory, but trotted towards us like big dogs. One turned her face left to show us her profile, batted one eye at ours and fluttered there. To watch a three-thousand-pound animal flutter makes a great gape of awe. The children shrieked: He's looking at me! For size is often male, and scares or flatters us with its attention. But she has nothing to do with that. And trots away. If this were a dance, a dream meeting, we might bow and leave her. But someone among us here is dreaming power, will buy a rifle, run out and begin the killing, is already having nightmares, planning an illustrious future. It's still possible to love how small we are in the face of her face and our fragility. Acknowledgements "The Future” was published in “The Litter I See Project” in February 2020. The voice quoted in stanza 5 of “I Said to the Sun” is Cat Bauer’s from her blog "Venetian Cat, The Venice Blog: Venice, The Veneto and Beyond” November 23, 2013 “The Night the Rhinos Came” was commissioned for the symposium “Rhinoceros: Luxury’s Fragile Frontier” which was held in Venice, Italy in 2018 and published in the exhibition catalogue. It was also published in Canthius in 2019. In 2021, it will be included in a special issue of Luxury: History, Culture, and Consumption focused on the Venice symposium and edited by Catherine Kovesi. Ronna Bloom is a teacher, writing coach, and the author of six books of poetry. Her most recent book, The More, was published by Pedlar Press in 2017 and long listed for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her poems have been recorded by the CNIB and translated into Spanish, Bangla, and Chinese. She is currently Poet in Community at the University of Toronto and developed the first poet in residence program at Sinai Health which ran from 2012-2019. Ronna runs workshops and gives talks on poetry, spontaneity, and awareness through writing.
2/20/2021 POETRY: SAMUEL TONGUECARHENGE Pollok Free State, 1995 (i.m. Colin Macleod) New car smell rammed into the roadbed until it stinks of the earth’s gut: muddy leaves, wet dog, plum-cake. Lichen-rust tectonic under bonnets, engines furred. Headlight bulbs are goldfish bowls, tenantless. Doors pucker with each slam and the boot flaps like a gull-wing. Twin-exhausts are organ pipes, emptying. Everything natural, every thing resourced: we make the things that make us, moulded or vulcanised. Blacked tyres made up with stibnite. When we fire them, rubber drips from the wheel-arches like hot sugar, sweet petroarticles of faith on the tongue. We circle each instant monument, generous heretics, knowing these are ugly gods – bitter in the stomach, black in the lung.
ANIMAL TRIALS: STATEMENT FROM THE TRIAL OF THE WEEVILS OF SAINT JULIEN In the spring of 1587…some weevils were arraigned before the ecclesiastical court in St Jean-de-Maurienne for despoiling the vineyards of St Julien. John Harwood, ‘Deliver Us from Weevils’, Literary Review, August 2013 If I may speak on behalf of my sisters who, of late, have sprung bright from the soil and turned these vineyards into frail stock and failed wines; at no time did we act contrary to our creation; and, indeed, as you will know Reverend Father, your wormy books spell out in calfskin and ink, that we precede your own ape-like standing in the Great Chain of Being. God created animals first, – each creeping thing – and gave us every green herb for food. If I may be so bold: the holy vine-leaf sweetens in our grubbing mouths; the grape swells for us, juicy globes without sin. You might damn us to desist but you would do well to remember this: this trial will not bring the control you crave. Insects are on the side of the angels and we shall turn you out, even unto the grave. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "Carhenge" first published in The Scores, then Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) "Containerization" first published in Gutter, then Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018) "Animal Trials: Statement from the Trial of the Weevils of Saint Julien" published in Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) Samuel Tongue's first collection is Sacrifice Zones (Red Squirrel, 2020) and he has published two pamphlets: Stitch (Tapsalteerie, 2018) and Hauling-Out (Eyewear, 2016). Poems have appeared in Magma, The Compass, Finished Creatures, Gutter, The Interpreter's House, Envoi and elsewhere. Samuel is Project Coordinator at the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh and he lives in Glasgow. www.samueltongue.com; Twitter: @SamuelTongue
|
ISSN 2563-0067 © Copyright 2023 | Watch Your Head Contributors Sign up for our Newsletter Buy our print anthology Watch Your Head: Writers & Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Books, 2020). |