MxT

MxT

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.

Winner:
2014 AM Klein Prize for Poetry
2015 Pat Lowther Award for Poetry
2014 Pushcart Prize, “Like A Jet”
2011 Friends of Poetry Award, Poetry Magazine “5 Postcards from Jericho”

Nominated:
2015 Lambda Award for Lesbian Poetry
2014 National Magazine Award “Like A Jet”
2013 National Magazine Award “The Dead Ones”

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 like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating, cheeky, allusive, hallucinatory: this is Queyras at her most powerful.

Praise for Sina Queyras’s previous books:

‘Eclectic engagements characterize Queyras’s work, but any suggestion of characterization of her work immediately brings a morphing to something new, intelligent, and provocative … Sina Queyras is a poet to read and reckon with.’ – Lambda Literary Review

‘As a poet, Queyras is secretly romantic, writing with lyricism and a voice that’s unafraid of sentiment or emotion … Queyras’s words spark like pickaxes on old asphalt.’ – Eye Weekly (on Expressway)

ISBN-10: 1552452905

ISBN-13: 9781552452905
96 pp, Paperback
Feb 1 2014
$17.95 CAD
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