The latest from My Ariel is up. Thanks to Mark Bibbins at The Awl.
The dead bell, the dead bell
Every Christ a clap of bad behaviour,
Ballsy as Blake, a birthmark
Of meat, a red frill of privilege.Baby eaters all, a sweet girl
In a white cage. Such a useful future
Looming, the men at the door of thirteen
Waiting for the right moment.
Here’s the entire poem.
The latest poem from my new Plath manuscript is up at The Walrus. Thanks to Damian Rogers for choosing it. If they look familiar, they should be: they are re-visions, ghostings, confrontations, and responses to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.
“The Jailor,” The Walrus
“I am no Lady, Lazarus,” Rusty Toque
“Little Fugue,” The Awl
“Thalidomide,” “The Rabbit Catcher,” The Malahat Review
“Couriers,” “Cut,” Poetry
MxT, or “Memory x Time,” is one of the formulas acclaimed poet Sina Queyras posits as a way to measure grief. These poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over in their hands, by invoking other poets, by appropriating science, by studying the history of elegy. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: this is Queyras at her most powerful.
“Sina Queyras is a poet to read and reckon with.”—Lambda Literary Review
All the gods know is destinations. I have raised
A glass, my eye, your hook. Let’s face it the world
Is a shrinking place and hungry: too much grief
To feed. I float away from you on hard
Covers. I step out on the stacked hours. Words
If they were soil how I would throw them back into the
Compost pile and wait for spring. Those “this is how
It is,” speeches appear and later diamonds soft as bullets.
I went to the library looking to scaffold my thoughts.
Sure, now you say Lucretius. Intelligence is so often
Hindsight. Outside Holly Golightly’s townhouse
There are taxis. The end of me, or you, is of no concern.
Frederick Seidel anoints me with the head of his penis.
It is soft as a chamois and spreads like egg across my scalp.
If you want a review copy please contact Evan Munday at Coach House Books. Launch dates to come. I will be in Toronto and Vancouver for February and March.
