folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets
medallion
ultra mild king pack
bring
me back the change /
a
puddle’s dilation spoke of
time,
its passage. if it grew, I stopped
to
study
its
oily surface & sub-marine floor,
as
a farmer considers
his
growing crop
midway
through
the
season.
churches,
corner stores, music halls,
pubs—the long & short walks between
each
landmark, a room
in
the house of my mind.
there,
the ditch where the toad lived.
the
storm drain, where loose change gathered.
there,
that brick building, its ragged clump
of
vervain, goldenrod & pink clover; the bees’
orbit.
in
the giant window of the garage,
the
mechanics’ blue fire.
even
satan disguises himself as an angel of light /
so,
I peeped into a basement window
&
was caught, having seen nothing interesting.
people
move abstractly in their homes.
I
was sorely punished—
I
was just looking.
I
heard them singing, però
promise,
do not tell your nonno /
how
could she believe in god’s miracle, but not
mine,
to love as god does, indiscriminately?
I
live now in her house,
a
duplex, a side street,
a
fatherless boy of the seventies and eighties.
I
grew up surrounded by men.
grandpa
& uncles in every corner
playing
rummy; listening to radio baseball;
debating
whether boxing was too sissy
an
olympic sport, driveway day-drinking
around
the town car; strange brew on vhs
on
the tv in nonna’s living room.
when
the devil comes, this is what it feels like /
clear
liquor in a rocks glass. tongs in a paper bag.
I
traced my lover’s hip in ‘91 after the opera house.
what
was he saying in that chorus?
I
said: entertain me. he said: entertain us.
yeah
/ what a
sacrament, his lips on my mine.
when
the devil comes, this is what it feels like /
love
songs, free peanuts, broken shells, inner skins
iridescent
& sailing,
discarded,
to a sticky bar floor.
I’m writing a novel about love, work, and madness, set in 2012, in which the protagonist, a bisexual, bipolar tradesman who writes poetry but has never published, has a poem that ends up as a finalist in a national poetry prize. His favourite poets are Whitman, Bukowski, and Lowell, but he’s been reading Phil Hall and Don McKay. This is that poem. I wrote it, but “I” didn’t write it—James Judas Uxley did.
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Margo LaPierre [photo credit: Curtis Perry] is a freelance book editor and poet. She serves on Arc’s editorial board and wrote the Writers’ Union of Canada’s guidebook on the author-editor relationship. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and a publishing certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. Her second poetry collection is Ajar (Guernica Editions, 2025).
