Paul Pearson : Fragmented Body

 

 

 

 

how can we all still
be so surprised by something
you saw coming for so
long a life
has to end
but

still
our bodies fragment our our ness
dis integrates leaves
us dis corporeal ex
tinguished and (worst of all
silenced

Doug

I will not try to contain
you here you live
in the space between
carefully
chosen
words

sometimes just between
the breath of a sound
sounding
now forever
between
breaths

we will be reft
with out
so syncopated I
will leave this
as you found
as you taught

in a breath an ex
halation can be every
thing that will be
said starts with an
aspirated
aspirant

<<short sharp exhalation>>

 

 

 

 

Raised in a mining town in the mountainous back-country of southeastern British Columbia, Paul Pearson now lives in Edmonton where he lives and writes with his wife and two children. He has worked as an arts administrator in the non-profit sector and spent nearly two decades with the Government of Alberta and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts before making the jump to Municipal government administration in 2018.

Pearson has been heavily involved in the literary arts community in Alberta for more than 20 years. He is the co-founding editor and chapbook designer for the Olive Reading Series and a current board member of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. His poems have appeared in Descant and Event, and the anthology Writing the Land: Alberta Through Its Poets from House of Blue Skies. His debut collection, Lunatic Engine, was published by Turnstone Press in the fall of 2020.