folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
Narcissus reflecting on the end of a civilization
1.
in a way this kind of resembling
was always easiest in front of animals
failing beside a mirror pond or lake
with calm edges or gilded lilies, an echo
2.
it takes from form a duplicity
of words, what can we say?
it's always me waving
at myself in every text
3.
i don't really know the palate
to best represent spring and all
and all on paper, perhaps
fish scale and bird wing?
4.
once the tone hits the ear drum
i've found it best to keep going
along that path even if another
branches off into the woods
5.
maybe i will be waiting on that path
and then again maybe not me, maybe
it might just be you, alone in the text
waving at me waving at myself, maybe
6.
to round out the scene, i guess
a flick of the wrist and a hook
on a line of echoes or chords
ringing circular from a flung bone
I know how to deal with people like me
a little ice patch here
some caltrops there
between friends
relationships
dropped in place
permafrost pitch
a pond upon which
everything thins
and we go skating,
blades going scritch
scritch, well, that's rich
thinking lange
but meaning
ursprach as long
as it continues to exist
the ice upon which
i will eventually slip
a moment in transit
a lifetime of checks
a note from one trick
on a box that marks
the next second
an exemplary code
of conduct
labeled: only
for public use
In my life
Nobody looks at me
quote like I do, at best
they recognize a shape,
perhaps a pleasing one,
that confirms me as
not inanimate. I guess
that's the best anyone
can do in a world where
sensors know more about
me than my doctor or my
loved ones, where I am
constantly disappointed
by the inability of my self-
integration with the devices
in my life.
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Jason Christie lives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of Canada Post (Invisible), i-ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). His most recent chapbooks are: PSA (above/ground) and Heavy Metal Litany (Model press). He is looking for a home for a new manuscript about memory and intergenerational trauma that he wrote with the help of several Python scripts. He won the bpNichol chapbook award for Glass Language Untitled Exaltation (excerpt) (above/ground).
