Sunday, October 13, 2024

Craig Carpenter : After Roy

 

 

Your poem/s
Cannot be found

Lost in the annals

Of a digital archive

Broken links

Take me to paywalls

Now

You have left us

With these places to visit

With only

Vague snippets

Of your work

That may have been so

Much more

Could I find it

Now I will write for you

This

Shortened line

Breaking things down

The whiteness

Down the white

Page

The white

Fingers reaching out for

The red and yellow

The redress and reparations

They said sorry

For that too

The Japanese internment camps   in the 80s

When we were feathering our hair

You were reminding us

Of the truth of how

Your parents became Manitoba

Beet farmers

My ancestors were beet farmers

You know I’ve seen photos of their

Fat-as-sausage English beet farmer

Fingers 

Too alongside

Me here

Where the air   cooler

Comes through windows

Fall they found him

Rigor mortis at his typewriter

Not you Roy Miki but the other

Roy Kiyooka   painter and poet

You wrote about

Friend of the TISH they say

Was shit in reverse

Bobby and Daphne now

Still here all the names

nothing now

No thing

Gone

We will all be

Spirits in the cooling air

Soon too   like the leaves

That are turning and

The snow arriving over the mountain

Passes

Palimpsest

Covered in absence

a digital white

Wash of

your poems

I will find a real book

With pages beaten leaves

Pulp and paper for these

Fingers to touch

Now    I will

Find a Roy Miki Poem.

10 Oct. 2024

 

 

 

 

 

Craig Carpenter is a curator of the monthly poetry series snpinktn Speaking. He works developing speech technologies for the critically endangered language of nsyilxcn on syilx territory, the Okanagan valley of British Columbia, where he also works as an editorial advisor for Theytus Books. A former literary editor for poetry magazines such as Out of Service and The Carleton Arts Review, he was a student of the late poet Robert Hogg. His podcast about the TISH collective and Robert Hogg can be found here: https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/robert-hogg-the-widening-circle-of-return/