Sandy Pool

Sandy Pool is a writer and classically trained theatre artist who lives in Toronto. Sandy holds a degree in Theatre and English from the University of Toronto, as well as a Master's of Fine Arts degree In Creative Writing from the University of Guelph.

Her work work has been published in many literary journals across Canada including The Antigonish Review,The Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, dandelion, and Sub-terrain. She has been shortlisted for the Matrix Lit Pop award and has been recently supported by a Writer's Work In Progress grant from the Ontario Arts Council. Sandy also writes Opera librettos, and has been comissioned by Tapestry New Opera Works. Currently, Sandy teaches at Humber College, and is also working as a voice-over artist for productions in Canada and the United States.




Here is her street at dusk. The slick sheen of streetlamps
glowing over Parkdale. Here is her street, open mouthed,
desolate. Tulips long dead, no traffic. Even the park closed
down. Panic of needles, small wasps crouching in sand.
On Landsdowne, Sunday bells flood out from the little
Portuguese church where Nathan still works the corner.
Survivors scavenge the shoreline, looking for fuselage.

It isn't supposed to end like this, blood burdening the
lake. Spring and the scientists baffled. Nuclear run-off. All
the carp dead. At night, her street is silent, the stench of
fish over Parkdale. You swear you don't smell it; love, the
sudden absence.

~

You pin me against the wall, where the fat moths beat
themselves senseless. Mantis mouthed, I lean in, hungry
for salt, saliva. The porch lights burn for hours. You have
been waiting to take me here, body splayed out, limbs
akimbo. The light runs ragged across my face. Neighbours
turn on their lights, you fucking sonofabitch, but you
keep going. We both know you will never touch me like
this again.

We are mouthing the words. Famished tongues circling
with the grace of a thousand lemon trees swaying in rain.
We ordered Chinese food, discussed the future. I had
tried to love you before and failed. You leaned me back,
whispered, pushing yourself into me. Take it, please. Kept
running your skilled hands across my heart. Take it.
Bodies hard-pressed with humidity, peonies unfurling in
rain.

The landfill of dream is frantic. Perverse tufts of fur and
bone adorn your body. You lean over and whisper into my
ear; You'll never get out of this. True, and not true.
Coming back that night was a mistake.

The women were already crowding. They too, touched by
your eloquence, your inevitable dead-ends.

In sleep I offer my organs. Pink, pulsing and wild. It's not
enough, but all I can muster. If I could, I'd offer you
sea-light; the milk white skin of my eye.

~

The marriage didn't end. It simply dissolved as soap in
water. I left you, sadly, but for other reasons. You must
have wanted me around, though, considering everywhere
I was. I am piecemeal. I am a treasure map: find me.

October, the leaves murdered. A scrap of grace bangs
around in the back seat. The light falters. We dream
against each other, eyes ravenous, fur in our mouths.
Driving north believing in nothing. Each raccoon corpse a
talisman. Each blasted road, our own. Here, I love you like
sorrow sucking us down salt-deep. A frail cell multiplying
in the dark.

We pull over. The sign says Fresh Dew Worms and Ice
Cream. The sky gives away nothing. Something is eating
you alive – digging through the curvature of your muscle,
thin filaments of bone. Small minnows, sharp as Ginsu
knives, cut the dark corridors, the echolocation of despair.
You turn to me, face full of questions.

You had a map. You've always had a map.



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