folio : (further) short takes on the prose poem
Truck
Driving along Marine the truck in front of me is missing three walls – a flatdeck, a chain frill, a tied ramp, a grim mouth streaming twin lines, hot light, rows of white coins turning in wind. Smoker’s cough. What is on the flatdeck – can’t tell, a broad chest bound in foam, wind bursting from its core, damp beacon, plastic pushing back on day. I take the long mansion curve – ocean point – the foam-wrapped thing shifts – lurches toward the chain – I watch a body pour from the window onto the flatdeck – oh the thing is a piano it’s a piano –rushing toward me, toward the road as it unspools. Foam roils – changes in – wind tentacles – the afternoon light catches it all –wind touches road – fear touches time – the piano slips over the flatdeck, the truck turning toward the sky. The body is a boy. The boy and the piano chase each other around the flatdeck. The boy throws a lasso around the piano – loses it again and again. The piano moves like a buffalo. We take turn after turn after turn chasing each other down Marine. The road winds, the foam around the piano tears, pulses– finally – rips – the boy dives. He tries to capture the sound. He throws his lasso and now a long chain. The sound skids, the sound tries. Black and white keys fly at my windshield big as the hail the farmer held up on last night’s news – in his palm a pearl, an eyeball, a world – the boy can’t hold the piano together anymore – the sides are coming off in the wind – and a hairy back exploding out of it. Wires string glitter coils dozens of fine hammers a ladder of hammers knuckling the boy. He races to keep everything he can on the truck. Who is driving the truck? I follow and follow, my little collection of boxes in my backseat feeling now like a toy collection. Far past my destination I follow to watch the boy lose track of every piece of the piano. The foam he wraps around his shoulders, a cape for the sun. He stuffs them into his mouth, the black keys and the whites, he weeps and holds the long board pinned neat with last night’s score, then hurls it at me as I swerve. The last part that goes to the wind is the black fin – sleek as an orca’s. It crosses my windshield. I turn and see it divide a mailbox like a strawberry. A white strip down the middle of my eye, a settling planet. Last was the boy coming at me pure sound his chest open to the sky. It was moving day.
Time Giver
Zeitgeber: German for “time giver” and refers to any environmental cue influencing your circadian system.
Run damp alley, heart gallop to next moment, the future high cloud. It’s this day I am, treebranch fills dark windowpane, bird in its markings. Not in my homespace, sleep hard as a bird’s throat, sing, this is my life so. Going to the mountains now, high lake hangs out there, black mirror palm shines, drifts glass ground in-hand, cloud mirror grates uneven errr, tumbled by black tide, sky. Watch a woman at the shore dip and turn smouldering driftwood in the waves. A cindered arm, losing its fingers to ash. Full belly, full gone, no friend only this. Mind an ice rink now, day mutters to morning mutters, to future coming. Drove for weeks and now – fridge thrum in skull not stopping, I don’t know what is – electrical – Simplicity grief, cold cheese and bread smoked in glove compartment, grief simplicity. Get up with the light. Eyelids bloodblack on the dawn. Close the red curtains. Replenish and the diesel coffee runs the clock out on this wake. Tips for limbo life: co-working space with pale day birds, woodwork in the evening
Alex Leslie has published two collections of stories, People Who Disappear and We All Need to Eat, and two collections of poems, The things I heard about you and Vancouver for Beginners, which was shortlisted for the City of Vancouver Book Prize and won the Western Canada Jewish book prize for poetry. @notherstories