FOR SEAN FOR JAMES SAPPHO POEM FOR VERITY
& FOR RYAN BEFORE HE GOES
TO THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
Sam WESELOWSKI
FOR SEAN
The purple sandpiper breeds in sub-zero degree weather off the westward coast of Greenland facing Baffin Bay
by Canadian waters. It’s precarious in these corridors, locked vaults possessing untapped arctic oil, a diamond drill sinks into
your migraine. There’s a nuclear ship bobbing in the polar fog, widdershins. What do you make of these things? Rhubarb light spreads the rutabaga, peasants
with credit cards, farming implements, people scrumping for TVs downtown take it, it’s yours. At least I hope your head stops hurting, the diaphanous
waves at the harbour’s edge, drinking pineapple soda in tropical Nova Scotia, St. Mary’s Basilica, the piping plover, the Halifax Explosion, the trailing arbutus.
FOR JAMES
loxodrome or totality? in which the stars are blue and bright bring stony relief to people crowded under the moon’s got a scabby landscape, glacial glare, its quarries and tailing ponds coming down the line, it’s nasty optics — rhomboidal forms as city blocks laminated together by sea and sewer water, the meniscus curve — OUR FINGERPRINT ON THE PLANET terraforms the megafauna, I feel Aquafina flow through the pipes and love the concrete sense of dysprosium bits in which our voices pluck satellites just before breaking round the rectangle in my pocket, the brick your pulse and everybody too
SAPPHO POEM FOR VERITY
then came doom — the stars cluster shut, I sprawl in this black hole
FOR RYAN BEFORE HE GOES TO THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS
You either join the military or you don’t. How come desire isn’t so…?
The road to Kansas among rainclouds at a standstill. Bluebells and buttercups on the cliff edge, speedwells
seems to me they don’t stand a chance. You either join the military or you don’t. It’s not so bad.
Against the breeze that left the ocean to cool me how come desire isn’t so…?
Sam WESELOWSKI is from Vancouver, Canada. His poems have appeared in Hotel, SPAM, datableedzine, Erotoplasty and Canadian Literature. I LOVE MY JOBwas published by If a Leaf Falls Press in 2019. OTHER THAN NORTH was published by Gong Farm in 2021. He resides in the UK.
Partner to a press called Tenement, Hotel is a publications series for new approaches to fiction, non fiction & poetry & features work from established & emerging talent. Hotel provides the space for experimental reflection on literature’s status as art & cultural mediator.
