Linda Besner
Linda Besner is originally from Wakefield, Quebec. Her poetry and reviews have
appeared in The Walrus, The Malahat Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, and Canadian Notes
and Queries, among others. She works as a freelance radio producer, and has contributed
to CBC's Definitely Not the Opera, Outfront, and The Next Chapter. Her first collection
of poetry, The Id Kid, was published by Signal Editions in April 2011.
WARTIME PUPPET PLAY OF THE KITCHEN STOVE
To fight with bowl and arrow, mustard seed and gas. To the
Northeast the crockery clashed, tea-towels bannering while
Renegade kernels whistled dixie south of the Mason jar line.
Fallen to the foxhole basin drain the pierced sieve gurgling
Hundredfold to black. The peppermill lighthoused a warning:
GADZOOKS! Through five-alarm smoke, four raging bull's-eyes
Brayed from pea-green fields aflame to Oxo cubes penned in and
Bleating. Behind the wall, the voices of disembodied mice
Uplifted with the tin can resistance in their banned anthem,
La Mayonnaise.
In the fallout a scuttled Bialetti slept on the sandscuffed rim.
The demobbed double boiler, its cold helmet fogged yet with
Flashbacks of dead steam, huddled thinking: For them; for their
Thankless foppish freedom those nigger wop commie jews...
No warmth from the citadel where sickly butter hid.
In the pockmarked plain of the ashen range, the dusty dishrag
Wrung its black-and-white checks. Knelt alone repeating to the fan
Blowing the all clear, La afham. La a'ref. La adri.
(I don't understand. I don't know. I have no idea.)
LEATHER JACKET
Boxcar and beauty mark killingly met.
Stoppered up calf's breath burnished to size.
Blackamoor milk, liquorice banquet.
Staghound, your leather jacket.
I've hunted a torch-song through greased music-sheets.
Set snares in the maple keys choppering by.
The wish is the rub, the held breath that asks it.
Genie lamp, your leather jacket.
You're trussed as a football's fluttering breast,
A windfall on wings as you pheasantly fly;
Finders keepers, a-tisket-a-tasket:
You, and your hold-me-tight leather jacket.
Featured Interview
Johanna Skibsrud
Interviewed by Alessandro Porco
So, I'd like to start with a comment made near the end of your Late Nights with Wild Cowboys, in the poem "Jawbone." You express real fear and anxiety over the prospect of having your life and love be objectified, turned into summary, a bowdlerized rendering that "[leaves] nearly everything out." More than that, though, you are worried about how we ourselves are complicit in this sort of exclusionary act. I guess what I'd like to ask first, then, is: do you imagine poetry as a means of letting things in rather than keeping everything out? And what are you aiming to let in, exactly?
I really do think of poetry in that way, in terms of providing a space -- an opening -- in which it might be possible to say the things that are hard, and perhaps impossible, to say otherwise; in which to express that inarticulate feeling that you get sometimes...continue reading
Featured Review
The Good News About Armageddon
By Steve McOrmond
Steve McOrmond's new collection of poems begins with a caution. In the style of TV content warnings, "Advisory" lists potential disturbing content to come: "themes which could threaten the viewer's sense of security," "Evidence of fatalism and irreligion," and the typical forewarnings about sexuality, violence and "language." Here McOrmond displays the dual cautionary and playful perspectives that interact throughout the book, switching from warnings about a drowning and an animal attack to the line, "The following program may contain scenes not suitable for language."
The poem raises the expected questions about what we censor and screen in popular media. What is considered objectionable, and why? Placed at the start of a collection whose title references Armageddon, "Advisory" leads the reader to expect a certain discomfort.
With that warning, the book moves to the title...continue reading