Canada, (b. 1942)
I Scream You Scream
- Waking Jesus sudden riding a scream like a
- train braking metal on metal on
- metal teeth receiving signals from a dying star sparking
- off involuntarily in terror in all directions in the
- abstract incognito in my
- maidenform bra in an expanding universe in a where’s
- my syntax thrashing
- loose like a grab that like a
- look out like a
- live wire in a hurricane until
- until I finally tie it down:
- it is a pig scream
- a pig scream from the farm across the road
- that tears this throat of noise into the otherwise anonymous dark,
- a noise not oink or grunt
- but a passage blasted through constricted pipes, perhaps
- a preview of the pig’s last noise.
- Gathering again toward sleep I sense
- earth’s claim on the pig.
- Pig grew, polyped out on the earth like a boil
- and broke away.
- But earth
- heals all flesh back beginning with her pig,
- filling his throat with silt and sending
- subtle fingers for him like the meshing fibres in a wound
- like roots
- like grass growing on a grave like a snooze
- in the sun like fur-lined boots that seize
- the feet like his nostalgie de la boue like
- having another glass of booze like a necktie like a
- velvet noose like a nurse
- like sleep.
Setting the Table
- 1. Knife
- who comes to the table fresh
- from killing the pig, edge
- of edges,
- entry into zip.
- Knife
- who can swim as its secret
- through the dialogue or glimmer
- in a kitchen drawer. Who first appeared
- in God’s hand to divide
- the day from the night, then the sheep
- from the goats, then from the other
- sheep, then from their comfortable
- fleeces. Nothing sinister in this except
- it had to happen and it was the first
- to have to. The imperative
- mood. For what we are about to take
- we must be grateful.
- 2. Fork
- a touch of kestrel,
- of Chopin, your hand with its fork
- hovers above the plate, or punctuates
- a proposition. This is the devil’s favourite
- instrument, the fourfold
- family of prongs: Hard Place,
- Rock, Something You Should Know,
- and For Your Own Good. At rest,
- face up, it says,
- please, its tines
- pathetic as an old man’s fingers on a bed.
- Face down it says
- anything that moves.
- 3. Spoon
- whose eloquence
- is tongueless, witless, fingerless,
- an absent egg.
- Hi Ho, sing knife and fork, as off they go,
- chummy as good cop and bad cop,
- to interrogate the supper. Spoon waits
- and reflects your expression,
- inverted, in its tarnished moonlight. It knows
- what it knows. It knows hunger
- from the inside
- out.
Nocturnal Animals
- Another cup of coffee. Southern Ontario
- surrounds this kitchen like well-fed flesh.
- If I had
- a cigarette right now I’d smoke it like an angry campfire
- burn it into the unblemished body of the night.
- Lonely is a knife whose handle fits the mind
- too well, its oldest and most hospitable friend.
- On Highway 22
- a truck is howling for Sarnia or London.
- In my garage
- the aging Buick is dreaming the commercial
- in which he frees my spirit into speed while an eagle
- in slow motion
- beats applause above our heads.
- Another cup of coffee.
- Two years ago the wolves took shape
- in Lobo Township, lifting the tombstone of its name
- to lope across these snowy fields
- between the woodlots
- spectral
- legless as wind, their nostrils
- wide with news of an automated pig barn
- waiting for them like an all-night restaurant.
- Shot, their bodies wisped away, their eyes
- stubbed out.
The Dumpe
An old dance of which no one knows anything except that the word is generally used in a way that suggests a melancholy cast of expression.
— The Oxford Companion to Music
- No one remembers what is
- danced to the echoless drum one
- one
- one
- one or you can simply
- slam the door.
- When you feel the spirit move you
- plant your foot. Stamp each
- butt into the pavement,
- Close your right hand loosely
- round a disconnected gearshift.
- You never asked for this. This
- is what you got. Forget
- “refining figuration of the human
- form in space” and other psychosomatic noise.
- Wear your luggage.
- Get in line.
- Think of the alligator and the pig.
- They never asked for this.
- Drop the disembodied body. Stamp.
- Forget.
About the Poet:
Don McKay, CM (b. 1942) is a Canadian poet, editor, publisher and educator. McKay earned his PhD in 1971 from University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales. He has taught at the University of Western Ontario, the University of New Brunswick, The Banff Centre, the Sage Hill Writing Experience, and the BC Festival of the Arts.
McKay is the author of twelve books of poetry. He has twice won the Governor General’s Award, for Night Field (1991) and Another Gravity (2000). In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006).
The co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books, one of Canada’s leading poetry presses, McKay was also editor of the literary journal The Fiddlehead from 1991-96. His book of poetic philosophy centers on beliefs in metaphor, wildness, and the homing instinct. In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada. [DES-07/14]
Additional information:
- Don McKay at McClelland & Stewart, publishers
- Don McKay at The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry