Pomegranates
for the peoples of SSSUUUFFF
Lovers,
deboned by hot wind,
jellied with afternoon swim, halve
a coppery pomegranate, lamenting their
flesh grown weary with sun. Lustrous wavers
in the light anneal from off the late evening lake.
Saturnine but desperate, they savour each bite
while revival teems from their glistening chins.
They yark down their nest of sleeping bags
from the willows as the heavens seep in
to the purple spectrum and they join
that dizzying binary code
of the whirling
mOOn.
For Sophia
The
T.A. at the high school talks about you, Sophia,
and
your Hot Rods munching husband is my Uncle Steve.
Easy
to see there’s no ring on your finger - we’re not surprised.
The
keyboard-trace that he caught you by, confirming
your
love to this Lieutenant Nevsky in the Donbas,
bums
out the family softball team. Granny is broke
from
the stagette she threw for you in Minnetonka.
We
would agree, Steve is no Astro Engineer
from
Belarusian State, but he’s a solid contractor
who
built you that two story only this fall. You appeared
first
in a thumbnail gallery with asymmetrical hair.
Then
donning your poses with those Grizzley cubs –
he
wanted you, he told us at the water tower retrofit,
more
than those hussies from Herzegovina. Your origin
story
felt greater than our own: Black Sea violinist,
your
thesis on Drahomanov, the middle daughter
of
a sturgeon fisherman – then the seven months
wait
for your papers to clear when I saw your boobs before
I
knew you. Uncle Steve and you looked permanent
until
that after-party Aunt Doreen discovered you
in
the computer room listening to Gopnik Deep Trance,
crying
over those poems emailed by Nevsky.
I
heard that fight: he bugging you about the Ruskies
in
Rambo, his blubbery take on the sub commander:
you
screaming how you always hated BBQ;
the
same week he burst in the teacher’s lounge
demanding
you write down your computer passwords.
Is
it true he wouldn’t help you look for your brooch
on
the Astroturf? Is it true that he scoffed at your poem
about
torchlit processions worshipping in sea caves
in
the Town Coffee News? Sophia I long to nose
my
Chevette to the double garage where you bunk
on
a rusty cot stripped of your electronics.
Catfish,
after Ovid
Other creatures after
their various kinds shot
forth
from earth with sudden combustion.
Lingering moisture
opened
in the sun, and the heat made
the mud in the water-logged
marshes
swell and expand. Seeds of animal life|
were hatched in the mother’s womb
of earth-
making
soil, which engendered them, hatching
in course of time
to
the forms of the distinct species. Such
as we observe when
the
Red overflows its banks, leaving muggy
deported clay to bake hot
in
the sunshine. Farmers turning clods
with their vapour trails,
discover
a horde of new creatures, a fish
with whiskers, poised
on
the threshold of diving into the dirty
runnels,
while others flop, unformed
wiggling without pause:
these
catfish sometimes appear
adorned in racy teddies,
some
parts exposed, but most
composed with cut and paste.
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Jay Stafinak: a half-breed, Sixties-Scooped, bastard poet wandering through Winnipeg's Crown, Seven Oaks, the surging homeland of the mighty Red River Metis. His book, Night Became Years, was nominated for the Governor General Award, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award, and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. He is the Recipient of the 2015 Bliss Carmen Award for Poetry. Recently one of his poems was published - as a Baconian Cypher - for Brock University's Small Walker Press. He writes poems and helps raise his three daughters while studying medicines throughout the bushes of Pilot Mound. Every day he raises his glass in memory of Steven Heighton.