Canada, (b. 1974)
The Baby Turns into a Pig
- Perhaps it is a blessing when the baby turns into a pig.
- Rooting for mushroom milk in the morning dew.
- He was threatened with capsicum beatings and shaken repeatedly.
- Survived thanks to his thickening pig neck.
- Perhaps it is blessing when the baby turns into a steel rod.
- Puppy dogs will never melt her and she will be master.
- Still, she is dishwasher-safe and eminently useful
- for staking tomato plants, though a bit excessive, and there is always work
- in the construction industry, just try not to cry when they laugh.
- Perhaps it is a blessing when the baby turns into an episode of Lost.
- Simultaneously existing in more timelines than a mother can follow, for she is weak-headed and feels DVDs like pillows.
- And yet, there is the baby’s beginning, middle, and end, her inciting incident, her turning point, and her climax.
- She is simultaneously resolved and unresolvable.
- Turning into an episode of Lost does not preclude turning into a baroque pig.
- Perhaps it is a blessing when the baby turns into a vacuum.
- For when he opens his mouth, the world pours in.
- The logical conclusion is his own implosion and disappearance.
- An empty empty space.
- The absent debris littering his mother.
About the Poet:
K.I. (Karen Ilene) Press (b. 1974), is a Canadian poet. She attended the University of Alberta, the University of Ottawa (where she got her M.A. in English Literature) and Simon Fraser University (where she attended the Master of Publishing program).
Press has worked in the book publishing industry in Toronto, doing freelance and contract work for firms such as Anne McDermid & Associates, Doubleday Canada, Penguin Canada and Otherwise Editions and later doing general communications work in education and the arts.
She has also been an artist-in-residence in Toronto, Scotland, and Iceland. In 2005Press moved to Winnipeg, where she worked for the Winnipeg Folk Festival before joining the faculty of the Creative Communications program at Red River College as the Creative Writing instructor.
Press is the author of three books of poetry: Pale Red Footprints (2001), Spine (2004), and Types of Canadian Women (2006). She has a fourth book of poetry, tentatively titled Exquisite Monsters, near completion. [DES-07/14]