He buys used books
not thrillers or novels or the soft porn favoured by his ilk
but rather picture books
for a budding blonde
six years old and a thousand miles away
He reads to her on the phone
every second night
and tries to make his voice
into the bright illustrations
of lion’s paws
and thorns
and the plucky child who dares to help
They connect […]
That not-quite-autumn evening,
the day after she came to us,
we were called to a neighbour’s yard
to witness a rare and wondrous city sight,
a porcupine, dark shape in the branches of a crab-apple tree.
We saw the bristling spikes
the clinging toes
the silent gasping mouth and
the hopelessness of descent
of that poor beast
until the bright plastic toys of a summer-not-yet-packed […]
space
between imaginary lines
marking our mountains from theirs,
separating our scraggly unshaven spruce from those beyond
the thin boundry scars of transit and time
Big,
like our womenbuilt for birthing and beating
Big this place,
the boreal crosshatch of powerlines and leaseholds
the oily after-scent of second day clothes
the distance between pumpjacks and prostitutes
the way we keep it together
hold it […]
