11/6/2019 POETRY: D.A. LOCKHARTOTTO E. ECKERT STATION TAUNTS FIRE TO GRANDMOTHER She rises through nitrous oxide sunset greets the Boji Tower, greets it in persimmon sky, arrives in the fall of this late burning sun. Before her, coiling bolts of coal cooked air pour forth into diminishing light, slip and fade in opaque whisps. One street over in a sapling park, several geese lament the lost Oldsmobile plant. What song will rise to greet the final train load of Powder River Basin earth, when it arrives to be cooked up beneath the Eckert Station’s unfiltered bundle of shareholder ambition, pleasure, ambivalence. Landmarks, despite their poison are missed in the absences before and behind us, their ends the loss of measures to our traces left upon creation. Grandmother rises, her downward fixed gaze rests on the steady tumble of coal-fired smoke feeding a hundred-thousand air conditioners. SWALLOWS RUN FRANTIC AT THE WATER'S EDGE Trace the pathways of swallows, running veins atop Waabiishkiigo, criss-crossing whirlpools left by minnows, stalking the same hatch. Discarded, yellow ash leaves islands unto themselves crest and fall on this lake swollen past temperament by distant snowfalls, creation rising to meet creation Beyond us, northward our land peters out into shipping lanes, currents of sand, algae, driftwood. Each caress of this lake refreshes us, slows us Horizon holds mid-lake lighthouse, toilet shaped, blotting out Wheatley beyond. A lesson that lake freighters, pleasure boat fishermen, ignore in due course. The lake, creation moves slow. Swallows frantic atop it, us lazy on this beach, and the water rises, another freighter steams past lighthouse green moves atop high waves. MÀXKI SIPU I come to you as you squeeze into the cement culvert bisecting the heart of Springwells treaty land at fence line you stretch out to the horizons, beneath lowrise office buildings, straight as a slash of a shixikwe bite, still, as moments after the strike. Know your destination arrives at an island of fire, constant grumble of angry earth. Above us shopping cart rapids slow to glass top rifle of water, wailing past weeds, nènèskakw burst skyward from cracks in constricting shore. D.A. Lockhart is the author of Devil in the Woods (Brick Books, 2019) and Wenchikaneit Visions (Black Moss, 2019). His work has been widely anthologized and has appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2019, Grain Magazine, the Malahat Review, CV2, and Triquarterly among others. He holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University-Bloomington. Lockhart currently resides in the Souwesto region of Ontario where he splits time between Pelee Island and Waawiiyaatanong in Three-Fires Confederacy Territory. He is the publisher at Urban Farmhouse Press.
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