Articles

I felt / the soil-dark downward / proof of being, the earth / an appetite, an almost-love, the air / a meeting ground, / the whole of seeing / seeable

Every time the women came to bathe, inevitably, someone’s bracelet or earring fell into the drain, and the head female bath attendant led a blindfolded Haji Gershin into the baths, where he stood amidst the naked women, tapping the copper pipes, his head cocked to the side.

Good criticism also helps us see why some art doesn’t work, or works poorly, activating the worst in us. When criticism is judgmental in the sense of being censorious, that too is in the service of art and our experience. The critic is showing us why we need and deserve better.

N 58° 10.684’  W 125° 45.021’ Muskwa Kechika, Homelands of the Kaska Dene, Treaty 8 and Tsay Keh Nations   First snow briefly on the backs of moving animals in the high altitudes. At the lake’s edge I’m waiting for the hour when the pain makes sense. The loon’s empty dance hall levitates. Several unproven…

i ———Where did it come from, this call ———to the interior— you will tree plant in BC forests, four hour by chopper from Prince George. The cork boots, belt and shovel bandanas and bungees, tin stove and tarp all packed, the many days drive in an ancient van sealed with shiny hope and duct tape.…

I remember the clouds yesterday— cow-belly low and heavy, pregnant with Irish rain— the way they hugged Quinn Abbey. clouds the colour of stones, shale grey and lichen-shadowed. ———Masses lighter than the ones on that first ———chemo morning, heavy rain sliding ———down the pane, as my son knelt ———beside the shocking yellow puke and bile.…

The lake has a provisional name. It has had other names. It’s possible those names were also in some way provisional, unless the lake has a name for itself. Facing it, it’s feasible to believe that the lake really does have a name, one it has given to itself and that it keeps. It keeps…

i. I was circling in a dry cistern pit, when I asked the Spirit to gamble on me. What were the chances, half-in and half-out, that I’d answer the ad in the paper? ———————Tossed in the box by the phone, it waited. Shame makes a hornets’ nest deep in the body. I’d lost twenty years…

I. – He must have hopped. How else could he have come —–out, as they tell us, with his hands and feet —–bound? and the loud voice ordering the winding-sheet —–to be dismantled, and the residuum —–of grief being wiped away? We live with this —–clown of a body, Brother Ass. We wipe —–the faeces…

                                in the Congo basin Children crack palm nuts milked of fats, stripped of orange. They smack nuts on rocks, split out the kernel of ndika, chew the smooth flesh and spit a festive spray of whitest white, ———like the…