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POETRY: E. MARTIN NOLAN

6/27/2021

A 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

POETRY: JENNY BERKEL

6/27/2021

LITTLE 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.

POETRY: E. MARTIN NOLAN

POETRY: JENNY BERKEL

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