Canadian To-Do List
Carefully select a card
from the troubled relationship section
Discuss how many senses there are
five or six or twenty-something
Eat a second maple cookie after church
then a third, then a fourth
Wear your blandness like a cape
Make like a horse and commit to the bit
Vote for your second- or third-favourite party
Ask your local MP to put their murder where their mouth is
Work hard, and hurry hard
Use beaver tail as a verb
Misread the phrase self-storage scattered across windows
think about how and when and where we store the self, and why
Go over Nowhere Falls in a barrel
Take a seat in your Algonquin chair
With a straight face, say I come from guns
or They avalanche-bombed the backcountry
Look for meaning in an all-white peacock
Remember that summer you thought helium was going extinct
Plant a phone tree in the dirt
Use soapstone to wash your conscience clean
Say a prayer to the sky blue
of the peace keepers’ helmets
When asked What? say Nothing.
Serve cold cuts for lunch again
Write a dirge for a ship in AABCCB
Take a painting workshop with your wife
Imagine the continent
unconquered by the coming storm of flesh
Learn both official languages
so you can speak with a forked tongue
Stop by a greenhouse that’s closed for repairs
study the empty koi pond
Misread old-stock Canadians as
old stock questions, and laugh
Find meaning in typos, like
The premise is monitored.
Profess your love of immigration
when the right people are doing it
Memorize all the CHL teams:
the Battalion, the Oil Kings, the Generals
Recline into the chesterfield of your laurels
stubby bottle in one hand, slave trade in the other
Wallpaper the basement Buffalo plaid
Come up with an inspiring name, like Ontario Proud
Dress up as an Indian for Hallowe’en
Don Cherry is yelling again
Alex Manley is a Montreal-based
writer whose work has been published by Maisonneuve
magazine, Vallum, The Puritan, Carte Blanche, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day
feature, among others, and whose debut poetry collection, We Are All Just Animals & Plants, was published by Metatron
Press in 2016.
Photo credit: Blair Elliott
Carefully select a card
from the troubled relationship section
Discuss how many senses there are
five or six or twenty-something
Eat a second maple cookie after church
then a third, then a fourth
Wear your blandness like a cape
Make like a horse and commit to the bit
Vote for your second- or third-favourite party
Ask your local MP to put their murder where their mouth is
Work hard, and hurry hard
Use beaver tail as a verb
Misread the phrase self-storage scattered across windows
think about how and when and where we store the self, and why
Go over Nowhere Falls in a barrel
Take a seat in your Algonquin chair
With a straight face, say I come from guns
or They avalanche-bombed the backcountry
Look for meaning in an all-white peacock
Remember that summer you thought helium was going extinct
Plant a phone tree in the dirt
Use soapstone to wash your conscience clean
Say a prayer to the sky blue
of the peace keepers’ helmets
When asked What? say Nothing.
Serve cold cuts for lunch again
Write a dirge for a ship in AABCCB
Take a painting workshop with your wife
Imagine the continent
unconquered by the coming storm of flesh
Learn both official languages
so you can speak with a forked tongue
Stop by a greenhouse that’s closed for repairs
study the empty koi pond
Misread old-stock Canadians as
old stock questions, and laugh
Find meaning in typos, like
The premise is monitored.
Profess your love of immigration
when the right people are doing it
Memorize all the CHL teams:
the Battalion, the Oil Kings, the Generals
Recline into the chesterfield of your laurels
stubby bottle in one hand, slave trade in the other
Wallpaper the basement Buffalo plaid
Come up with an inspiring name, like Ontario Proud
Dress up as an Indian for Hallowe’en
Don Cherry is yelling again
Photo credit: Blair Elliott