POETRY: MEREDITH QUARTERMAIN

FLAGPOLES AT THE OLD EXPO GROUNDS                 
 
jogger shoes flap flap flap
bike chains jingle
skateboards rush push
on and on words
surge to phone
faces to laces
 
no, I know, but it’s something
I’ve really noticed
a language I can’t understand
 
the bolt of weeds through planks
the mark of orange plastic cones
 
a couple on yellow steps
watch a play on a rotting stage
 
its clatter of empty flagpoles
its loom of concrete stadium
once the water’s edge
now Edgewater Casino
 
spinning wheels
spinning Highway ’86
yachts, trucks, ATVs
giant Swiss-watch McBarge
 
world in motion
world in touch
press on, carry on, keep on
 
odds on asphalt
odds on helicopter
odds on geodesic
 
I don’t think the psychiatrist warned them
they thought they heard the deer
they felt they were similar
 
 just look at the criteria
look at the architecture
the water’s push against land
their nightclub
 
they wanted to, they wanted very much
they rallied, they studied, they held summits
yet they knew they weren’t for plants
they weren’t for wildlife videos
they were for the stage
they were on track
for the house edge ​

Meredith Quartermain’s Vancouver Walking won a BC Book Award for Poetry, Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award, and Recipes from the Red Planet was a finalist for a BC Book Award for fiction. You can also find her work in Best Canadian Poetry 2009 and 2018. Her fourth book of poetry, Lullabies in the Real World, was published in 2020 by NeWest Press. From 2014 to 2016, she was the Poetry Mentor at Simon Fraser University’s Writer’s Studio Program.