7/18/2021 POETRY: KIM GOLDBERGA FEW BEARS I know of a few bears bears who seem thinner than normal they’ll slap your hands the bears are getting hungry Bears who seem thinner than normal these are facts: the bears are getting hungry I'm here to show you reality These are facts: The bears have been starving I'm here to show you reality along the shorelines where grizzlies have been The bears have been starving I'm not here to point fingers along the shorelines where grizzlies have been winners and losers in climate change I’m not here to point fingers without a necropsy winners and losers in climate change if you prefer looking at life from the end Without a necropsy we’re able to observe an emaciated mother if you prefer looking at life from the end in search of berries We’re able to observe an emaciated mother they’ll slap your hands in search of berries I know of a few bears. * (Assembled from recent news articles.) UNMOORED (after Hieronymus Bosch’s painting “Ship of Fools”) It always comes down to what has been lost – a cat, a mind, a god, a compass. Sometimes a silver sack of virtue spins away. Who has not shinnied up the spar pole to carve a fat drumstick from a roast goose? Or lusted for a pancake on a string? Or raised a flask to brain a pickled sinner in a ship as oval as a duck egg or an office for a head of state? We long for guidance from the owl above, our avatar of insight or scandal (depending on the century). We pluck the cherries, stir the winey sea, let the jester with an ass’s ears keep watch as we buck and sway into a melting glacier, its teal horizon a last reminder of the butterflies and jays. Kim Goldberg is the author of eight books of poetry and nonfiction. Her latest book is Devolution (Caitlin Press, 2020), surreal poems and fables of ecopocalypse. It was described as a "ferocious collection" in the Vancouver Sun. Kim's poetry has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in North America and abroad including The Capilano Review, Literary Review of Canada, Dark Mountain, subTerrain and Riddle Fence. She chaired the Women's Eco-Poetry panel at the inaugural Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle. Kim holds a degree in biology and is an avid birdwatcher in Nanaimo BC. Twitter: @KimPigSquash. https://pigsquash.wordpress.com/
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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