Transmitter and Receiver. Raoul Fernandes

      

      Transmitter and Receiver

      Copyright © Raoul Fernandes, 2015

      all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, [email protected].

      Nightwood Editions

      P.O. Box 1779

      Gibsons, BC v0n 1v0

      Canada

       www.nightwoodeditions.com

      typography & design: Carleton Wilson

      

      Nightwood Editions acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher’s Tax Credit.

      This book has been produced on 100% post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-free paper, processed chlorine-free and printed with vegetable-based dyes.

      Printed and bound in Canada.

      library and archives canada cataloguing in publication

      Fernandes, Raoul, 1978-, author

      Transmitter and receiver : poems / by Raoul Fernandes.

      Poems.

      Issued in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN 978-0-88971-309-3 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-0-88971-046-7 (html)

      I. Title.

      PS8611.E749T73 2015 C811’.6 C2015-901128-0

      C2015-901129-9

      For Megan

      By Way of Explanation

      You have this thing you can only explain

      by driving me out to the port at night

      to watch the towering cranes moving containers

      from ship to train. Or we go skipping stones

      across the mirror of the lake, a ghost ship

      in a bottle of blue Bombay gin by your side.

      I have this thing I can only explain to you

      by showing you a pile of computer hardware

      chucked into the ravine. We hike down there

      and blackberry vines grab our clothes as if to say,

      Stop, wait, I want to tell you something too.

      You have an old photograph you keep in your

      bedside drawer. I have this song I learned

      on my guitar. By way of clarification, you send

      me a YouTube video of a tornado filmed up close

      from a parked car. Or a live-stream from a public

      camera whose view is obscured by red leaves.

      I cut you a key to this room, this door.

      There’s this thing. A dictionary being consumed

      by fire. The two of us standing in front of a Rothko

      until time starts again. A mixtape that is primarily

      about the clicks and hums between songs. What if

      we walk there instead of driving? What if we just drive,

      without a destination? There’s this thing I’ve always

      wanted to talk about with someone. Now

      with you here, with you listening, with all

      the antennae raised, I no longer have to.

      The Goodnight Skirt

      Permission to use that snowball

      you’ve been keeping in the freezer

      since 1998. For a poem? she asks.

      What else? I say. I’ll trade you, she says

      for that thing your mom said

      at the park. What was it?

      “God, that mallard’s being a real douchebag”?

      Yes, that one. Deal, I say. Okay, how about

      the Korean boy who walks past

      our house late at night, singing

      “Moon River”? Oh, you can use that, I say,

      I wouldn’t even know what

      to do with it. But there is something else.

      I’ve been wanting to write about

      the black skirt we’ve been using to cover

      the lovebird’s cage. The goodnight skirt.

      In exchange, I’ll let you have

      our drunken mailman, the tailless tabby,

      and I’ll throw in the broken grandfather clock

      we found in the forest. One more, she says.

      Last night, I say. The whole night.

      She considers for a while, then,

      Okay, that’s fair. But I really had something going

      with that lovebird. All right, I say, write it

      anyway. If it’s more beautiful than mine,

      it’s yours.

      Bioluminescence

      Walking through the sensor gate at the public library

      after a heavy reading, you fear the alarm

      will go off from what is held in your mind.

      You reassure yourself with the thought that no matter

      how fuzzy it gets in the wire-tangled AV room,

      you are still lunch, with possible leftovers,

      for that wolf and her cubs. You have to imagine

      the wolf and her cubs, obviously, but it helps.

      When it comes down to it, it’s completely dark

      just a few millimetres beneath the skin, no matter

      how real the flickers on your nerve endings feel,

      what with this strong coffee, this pulsing sky. You remind

      yourself deep-sea life forms have evolved bioluminescence

      for practical, not spiritual, reasons. Lunch, leftovers, etc.

      Wooden chairs are real and tangible,

      which is why philosophers and poets are always

      referring to them, holding onto them, when hovering