AFTER THE DAY IN QUESTION
He cycled derelict, cherry-like translucence. Variegated
bolts of 1986
in brick-fronted yards. His bike
a slogan for cold metal, a flowing, of-its-year
pigmentation
of rubber and paint. A pointed
resolutely not up-hill idea
that you accelerate and skid to a halt, no
warning, a semi-circle swept in crushed rock
by a rear tire. Only,
this isn’t right. At four,
he couldn’t ride. The search a lit crossbeam, that’s it.
On this alone you smooth, as with a finisher’s trowel,
a slurried, interlocked unreality
through which he races your mother’s
boyfriend’s Chevy,
a flickering at the limits,
of erasure. There,
at the door—sharply folded—. Weighted,
like an apple cut in half—. The man’s
big hands
inert—. The letter,
smoke white—. Shreddings
you pursue, rounding corners—. Ballpoint,
focus, faintly on the tract,
the ink ready to lift for quick untraceability. The pages,
close-up, vague
as painkillers, as what
to do with you, an orphanage, an aunt across the country.
A child, blended in a curtain or a closet,
those absorbent,
long-sleeved signatures, watches
from under a slump of clothes, until a tension is subdued.
Waterlogged acoustics will crack true
through a seam, volcano seething. Underwater,
a face blown open
in diver’s mask. He counters refusal
behind a flaked grime. Wishes
he were armoured,
sinking
effortlessly in chilled swells
of no-light,
unused to milkshakes, unperceived,
nightbloom haloed around his body.
He trembles, skin on a pulse,
limbic weight a hotdog hat like any other.
He is, it can’t be denied,
in a resemblance dimension in jelly-like fuschias,
paraphrases,
echo, mark, odour—. Peril,
chiefly anger,
like Putman’s Wart Remover, discloses him
a layer at a time. You
don’t remember their name, whose reading this book
is alleged to mean more or less.
AFTERWINTER
Blowing gas through a wand,
I see a fruitfly drift into the seal.
I remember canola’s upstart gold flow. It went
as far as justified, our one
paved road in six directions.
Past this, there is of one
element not enough
and of another too much. Swans
in the flooded field.
Investors sprinting
pints of treacle
among tired farmers. Gossip
like crushed egg. That too,
for hold-outs who refuse their glass of milk.
And me? In a near playground
a pink, hooded jacket foisted on a bollard
like one doubled over
in despair. There is inside me a Pillarist
who infinitely extends
this moment of the gut punch. It’s far
from overrated, far from fair.
So full of my own blood
I am nauseous as anyone
who sells too well their steal.
ARRIVAL
I drag my breathy boot a little sideways, sweeping barbed ties,
to the conifers. So it happens, incomplete,
as if cupped under, asking how the war ended.
Asking how a war’s particulate mercy ended. Asking how the
dying ended. Asking how a war’s rank slugs
punctuate post-Enlightenment armour. Asking, asking.
Incoherences. A train flank torn open —
wind and snow in it — pivoted twists
of high-carbon steel fleeing a timeless turnstile centre.
Scarved, huddled bodies shuffle through.
Scaffold. Crossbeam. Overnight
bag’s up-zipped heady wheatfield enclosure.
Their turn or mine, adorned by absence, as if gloved in plexiglass,
as if a world’s force will fluttertongue this fold of sunlit
tickets. Stupidly barcoded, my gait. Gorgeously
penetrated, this bloodwork. Hellish walk up blazoned cables,
staircase a bright-green snake: doubled-back,
body abrades body: that astrologer’s
scaly agate-mouth unsticks with sickbed poems.
Behind a plywood wall, grandma at her desk,
at work: crematorium releasing lightheaded
ash: coach after coach in raised countenance.
Would speak to her if I could, this partition between us.
I could make of it any over-endowed
applause dispersed by wind. Damp wound flowing when
the wind is right I hear even the dancing.
Garth Martens is the author of Prologue for the Age of Consequence and Who Else in the Dark Headed There. For his first book, he was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is also a past winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poetry appears in Dark Mountain Project, Poetry Ireland, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Vallum, Fiddlehead, and Best Canadian Poetry. He is a co-founder and producer for Palabra Flamenco, a literary flamenco ensemble that joins traditional flamenco dance and music with poetry and oral storytelling. He lives in Victoria, BC.
High Horse 