Tuesday, March 08, 2016

Tuesday poem #153 : Paul Zits : from dlog, dlog




it wasn’t so dark. yes. it wasn’t light enough that you could see
the road. it was light, but not so very light

and then i heard the light of day crackling
under the coffee-pot

and down the road came a woman with a basket on her head
or maybe a swirl of falling snow coming from her lantern

bright against the dark bulk of the brush
like small girls appearing in their undershirts

(girls accepting sticks of gum on their tongues
jam and bur scratches on the backs of their hands)

her face framed by her dark tendrils and bangs and her eyes
ringed with dark circles

eyes that flick cigarette ashes into laps, eyes that claim she grew
up in a circus tent, that her mother was a contortionist who died

during a trapeze act. blinded by the moon beating up
from the sand, she saw wing shadows thickening on the ground

she made a noose of her long black hair and snared
the bright lizards of moonlight

a big lumping woman, she passed and stared into the glass of my
shack, at her body with its muscular thighs, its small compact

breasts, and its slender flanks of an athlete. she moved this body
forward as if to see it better, moved it into the light

until it illuminated the upper half of her face. she rubbed her chin
with her knuckles. my reflection darkly surrounded

and enveloped her.

i could remember towns, houses, places, other people
but have managed to suppress myself out of my memories.


Paul Zits received his MA in English from the University of Calgary in 2010. Massacre Street (UAP 2013), the product of his creative dissertation, went on to win the 2014 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. In addition to serving two terms as Writer-in-the-Schools at Queen Elizabeth High School in Calgary, teaching creative writing to students in the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program, Zits is a regular instructor with the WGA’s WordsWorth Camp at Kamp Kiwanis. Zits is currently an instructor with the Edmonton Poetry Festival’s Verse Project, and the Managing Editor of filling Station.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

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