IV. (Summer)
Late summer crowds
downtown to sweat out sounds
Of music — beer cans
chunks of scapegoat drywall
Lodged in the city’s
bruised knuckle
Debris falls as light, chaotic bass-and-snare sound test
My alarm clock — no snooze
On the barely used convertible of hot weather
Afternoons
of soup,
Tar
muck,
Heavy
armpits
Down Guelph Line
The mushroom factory
Odour of constant
growth
Preppers stocking pickling
jars,
Jams and jerkies, canned
beans,
Half-burnt candles,
toothpaste
We sweat like hot tortilla chips
And relish
The conservation in a pickle
Our
wrinkled sofa,
Cushions,
rug, circles
From
a humid coffee mug
*
Around split sun and
transports in the turning lane
I crystal gaze impacts in
the glass
-phalt’s long foregoing
shadows
Brass and phlegm housing
Development a scowling grotesque,
Birdsong welling up its weeping tile
Walking
the avuncular country line in hard hats
Men
wave airy signals — perfunctory brake tap
At
the empty all-way stop
Every monument torn down
By the recurrent haze, and the rare hours
Where the sun sours through
Loud
Canada geese, branta canadensis, flap
Through
the laburnum sky
Like
a tattered banner, senseless
*
We live as much as humour
allows,
Loitering around the narthex
Of the latest Confirmation
The psalm or sutra of
the skies
Is not written on ruled
sheets
Of hailing fat cats and
dogs
A simple mist appears
To drive a coach and horses
through
The Great Escarpment
The
word used is key
Looking
up the high definition
Numbers
of habitable
The abstract
Of the meteorological report
Surreal
Summertime —
The clock
With no batteries
Jacob Braun grew up on traditional Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe territory in Thorold, ON. His poetry and prose have recently appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review, with above/ground press and elsewhere, and the selections here are from his forthcoming debut poetry collection, Ontarian (Guernica Editions).
