Deerfoot
and Stoney Trail
I tap my fingers on the passenger door of a Grand Caravan
as my city strangles and swallows the neighboring county.
These twin roads run rage through like heavy blood, fly off
in ruler-straight lines to flesh-wound the break of the prairies.
The grassland, turned by grotesque twist to rancher’s range,
then RV lot, then Lovecraftian freeway with RVs adjacent,
exists in a nervy fugue state. These suburbs are a rolling boil
constantly overflowing, smashing and splattering the stove,
destroying the table and pressurizing the pot’s contents,
so that we fidget in our core of confusion, submitting to scalding
until one day we reach out and cry, lost in the blisters and bubbles,
scorching with hunger and occasionally spitting out diamonds.
A Hairpin,
Lost in the Back Left Room
of a tavern at the end of the world. It rests
under a mahogany bed frame, over ageless
light sandstone, a comrade of tapestried tables. It breathes a
loss
of the lowly written off by the lowly cast down
for better friends, engorged with words
like “devotion” – or perhaps like “dignity”.
A hairpin, lost in the back left room
of a tavern at the end of the world commiserates
with a disused desk and an unlit candle. It speaks a host
of wretched truths and bitter bright beliefs -
derelict grime underneath a celestial tower.
Quartz Comments
L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s writing reminds me
of
a finely cut clear quartz.
Flannery O’Connor’s writing reminds me of
a smoky quartz, pitch-black and towering.
Don Domanski's writing reminds me of
a burnished citrine.
Elizabeth Smart’s writing reminds me of
a jagged ridge of amethyst.
Andrew Beyer's writing reminds me of
a quartz geode's rough outer shell.
