...it seemed the scent of lemonswas rising off the river but it was just theSunlight dish soap on our hands fromdousing the fountain on the police stationlawn a couple hours before smoking herstepdad’s weed twisted tight inside ourreport cards cause

His wallet’s stuffed with currency from allmanner of countries not in business now;his camera aches for discontinued film.

louis riel liked back bacon & eggs easyover   nothing’s as easy as it seems tho   when the waitress cracked the eggs open louis came to his guns blazing   like dissolution like the fingers of his hand coming apart as he squeezed the trigger

You’re certainly not doing itfor the money: that becomesclear when you imagine the weightof two quarters in your palm

After last call at three a.m. the sunon the horizon like a giant lodestarwould guide us over uneven boardwalks and dirt roadstoward the George Black Ferry, acrossthe mud-fed Yukon River to where our hidden worldof tents lay inside a maze of birch,where branches knocked and clacked in the windlike the restless bones of ghosts,where someone always screamed blue murder backat the landlocked sled dogs as they criedand howled at the lingering seasonand stunning lack of darknessinside the night...

On th train, back from th Empressdining car, snowing woodlands,pulling thru Manitoba, recallhow sum yrs after th second centenaryof th founding of Halifax, whichdate i commemorated with signabove my father’s street door

I saw my mother under sedation in the Psych Ward, after she collapsed at the funeral. She foresaw the bridge disaster, but no one believed her, not even father. Her “visions” made him uneasy.

Sadness has no reasons. Sadness is a luxury of spare time, a piece of pie leftover, the blueberry’s skin caught between your teeth, the black blear of happiness.

Use your grandmother’s knitting needles if they are steel and sharp, her crochet hooks. Hell, you could even use the split edge of this table. Slide your inner arm against the jagged grain, watch the splinters scrape you raw.

Benito like the oaf he wasinvaded Greece and got defeated

We’ve been outside for months now. We’re getting the way we do after so long without sight of land or a woman. Last night Vince licked my neck.

She carries my chair,she carries my walker,she carries my commode,she drops my heart   so hard it breaks into a hundred pieces

"Mother Mary approves of recycling. She gave birth in a barn, after all, even though where she is now she probably has most things in gold and jasper."

My beautiful old ones are disappearing slowly. They simply leave, without rules, without a farewell.

Here is your rickety wooden poem. Here is your red, peeling paint poem, your weather-beaten and abused poem. Here is your hands-full-of-slivers poem, knuckle-broken and arthritic.

No one explains things to dogs. The voice that’s missing has left its aroma everywhere,along with the faint stale smells of those who used to be here:

The phone rings at 11:30 at night and as soon as you hear your father’s voice you know something bad has happened.

We have men on the slope and men on the ridge. In the gully, more men. Men on the main road wait for the men on the esker to move up onto the ridge so that they (the men on the road) can take their (the esker-men’s) place. Men hesitate and grumble. T

langwage binds us 2gethr separatelee n parts n sharing almost replikating nevr reelee xact wun uv th biggest communal spells we ar all bound n unbound in

Poems of memorable customers: the one who ordered a hundred cheeseburgers, the one who bought three meals a day at the drive-thru, the drunk one in a clown suit, and more.

A poem from Randall Magg’s book about Terry Sawchuk, the legendary hockey goalie who got his start with the Detroit Red Wings.

At first the sound was like a raw stropping of steel on steel although we had little such heavy stuff along...

a rascally lab-shepherd and grumpy old cat didn’t much like each other

"I don’t read them—I don’t have time; I scan them. The title explains it all: I don’t read."