Asbestos Heights. David McGimpsey

      just to make the best of despair?

      Do you miss those bed-bound Sundays we had?

      You’d read classic American novels

      and when it was Henry James you would scream

      at the heroine, ‘Oh, just bend over!’

      Into the acacia you go, scowl mouth.

      Into the acacia with you, whatever

      Jonathan Franzen novel with the girl

      who chews the cuffs of her new blue blouse.

      Like heartfelt, canola is a made-up word.

      It brings together Canada and oil.

      It’s a tub of fun you’ll be glad to call

      I Can’t Believe It’s Not More Meaningful.

      Columbines

      In the kingdom Plantae, in the ‘You stink,

      Ophelia’ class, four of five columbines

      mark the spot where I finally decided

      to increase my social media profile.

      O, Annie Facebook, Clarissa Twitter -

      we’re going to the prom! I shed real tears

      just because my poem for Beyoncé

      was rejected by the Malahat Review.

      Could the columbines be mashed into scent,

      giving me a resilient mountain freshness?

      The answer, after that long flight to Paris,

      was a resounding absolutement pas.

      Still, I knew I was going to pluck and pluck,

      and I plucked until plucking became my life,

      well beyond any interest in sowing

      and its much-funner cousin reaping.

      Tulips

      Corduroy once ruled the kingdom of pants.

      I was still writing poetry back then.

      Or, whatever it was I did back then

      that made people say, ‘That’s not poetry!’

      The tulips my father planted back home

      bloomed steady most Easter-times, sure as

      the plans I sketched out to start feeling good

      got crumpled alongside a map to Rome.

      Casting ‘foul light upon neighbouring ponds’

      was not my cup of Sprite, but I enjoyed

      choking with anxiety whenever

      the seasons made a definitive change.

      Fall was all university khakis

      and old Nantuckets braying, ‘Hey, Corduroy!

      Your footgame burger garbage is garbage!’

      until it was finally footgame season.

      Nasturtium

      I took careful notes on the nasturtiums,

      ticking off each one I saw. Over the year –

      year and a half? – I saw near six hundred.

      The best and dumbest thing I ever did.

      As long as it rains, nasturtiums will grow

      and the cycle of life, from grassy spore

      to Mars Incorporated’s decision

      to make pina colada M&Ms, will go on.

      Oh, through it all, nose after heady nose,

      racking up scores, I started to lose heart;

      it sounds fancy and fragrant, when, really,

      I couldn’t be bothered with instant soup.

      Bring primrose like tomato soup

      and jasmine like a fresh oyster chowder;

      O daffodilly-coloured chicken noodle,

      O nasturtium with cloved pumpkin flower.

      Johnson’s Blue Geranium

      As late I returned to that corner café,

      so favoured by Montreal hipsters;

      I could not tell any of my old friends

      what happened after that stinky summer.

      It was spring and I spotted what I thought

      were Instagrammable crocuses

      but were, I was told, Siberian squills

      or maybe Johnson’s blue geraniums.

      Traditionally, blue geraniums

      symbolize a gentle constancy,

      where the Siberian squill represents

      being murdered by Joseph Stalin.

      I would have eaten them all, like a cow,

      just to ease the pain of not knowing.

      I returned to that corner cafe squinting,

      having long run out of quelling lies.

      (after Keats)

      Lady’s Slipper

      That poem was my career. It poured flop sweat

      and begged grad students to stop hating me.

      It punched at the famous and took cover

      in weeks of Beyoncé-fed solitude.

      That poem knew where it was and how much

      it was worth compared to a blow job.

      It knew the other poems by name: they

      gave me panic attacks they struck so quick.

      That poem was the great hope I wouldn’t work

      for a living, the dream I could survive,

      being admired as if an academic

      John Stamos (or a telegenic Žižek).

      That poem did what I told it to do.

      Sort of. It snarled up on Asbestos Heights.

      Now, of course, snarling is all it’s good for

      as my hunchback moves to the left, to the left.

      Saffron

      When the Glooscap Trail in Nova Scotia

      got too Glooscappy for me, I turned south.

      All the buckeyes and all the baseball games

      I’d need to score to prove I didn’t mind.

      Not that I grew so blessed with freedom

      I outlived personifying the wind

      (it ‘murmured,’ it ‘howled,’ it even ‘bled’)

      or outlived those who spoke for literature.

      Wherever they were, every sentence began

      ‘Poetry is . . . ’ and zeroed in, like a hawk,

      to how foolish it was I spent seven years

      writing sonnets about orange soda pop.

      My lungs were born to proof asbestos,

      my teeth edged to tear open Doritos.

      Poetry was bound to love Nova Scotia,

      what with