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6/27/2021 POETRY: E. MARTIN NOLANA LIFE “What we are engaged in when we do poetry is error, the wilful creation of error.” -Anne Carson 1 when we call error what we gain by does error become idol we give our last idle guilt a question overwhelmed by what error half billion animals in the bushfires and by quick overwhelm correction conservative estimate a billion 2 Condors trace California highways for coastal roadkill, enough to replace the megafauna. Our errors of transit replace an ancient diet. Our error is nature. Round goby in the middle of the Great Lakes food web, like strangers where your family was. Like a cormorant, you make a life of it. 3 the answer you arrive at impasse something new constant whiplash 4 Days rain in January, hardly got my big coat out. Days rain in January, ten-foot snowfall, were it cold. Days rain in January, sirens chasing, didn’t hold. Days rain in January, standing still is a route. 5 The leaves of some mass produced flowering plant look alive in all the gardens on my block. They are flat against the half-frozen earth, failing to wilt. A child calls her mom back to see a wet pile protected in a hedge’s shadow. “I found snow! Snow!” She is pointing at it, hopping. In my opinion, it is ugly. It melts as if rotting, greying from within. Soaked dry with soot. The child is better at hope than me. E Martin Nolan is a poet, essayist, editor and teacher. His first book of poems, Still Point, was published with Invisible Publishing in Fall, 2017. He teaches in the Engineering Communication Program at the University of Toronto and is a PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics at York University. More at emartinnolan.com
6/27/2021 POETRY: JENNY BERKELLITTLE GOOSE Child, what world is this? A bee thunders past your ear, velvet. Above, geese flounder long-necked against the guillotine of sun. Emerald beetles burrow out of ash, flash effulgent. The beached arm of Ontario laps blue-green algae rippling a radiant siren song. Soft as down, the nape of your neck nests into my palm. Perhaps the end of the beginning. A gossamer thread hanging precarious across the path. Where to walk with you, somewhere that stays. The water taps its hammer hands Into the land and blooms a sinister cyano crescendo.The bees pull a magic trick, disappearing in the span of a hand’s sleight. The ash, spun in larvae, grow weak-shadowed, and the geese have forgotten where to go. See: we made you a myth, light as a feather. SPECIAL REPORT ON GLOBAL WARMING OF 1.5°C The day you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I told you a dog, did you know then the world would turn to bone? Did you picture me graduating at thirty-two, childless in a pilling polyester gown with years already chewing at my hair, a cricket in my knee, the world whipping at catastrophe? Sweating inside this spectacle, I tap the years left on my thigh: one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve years to save ourselves from ourselves. Somebody’s grandfather sobs as his heart marches across the stage. Pride quivers in the jowls of apocalyptic deadlines. Love can be, love can be unbearable. When you asked me, did you know? Jenny Berkel is a poet and singer-songwriter from rural Ontario. Her interests include investigating how a poem is a song and a song is a poem. She has released two albums (Here on a Wire and Pale Moon Kid) and has another one forthcoming. Her debut chapbook, Grease Dogs, was published in June 2021 with Baseline Press.
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