I
hope to have the skill
for
building sentences—politic, poetic
and
alert. Not settle for a jingle-line like
Smash
the Patriarchy. Not like Dad
whose
tongue got tied
whenever
he opened his mouth.
When
it comes, I hope I won’t be
shy
to face the unrelated;
jettison
my leery side;
be
cabalistic as nine.
How
any number multiplied by nine
reduces
to nine: 9 × 3 is 27; 2 + 7 is 9.
How
adding nine to any number
doesn’t
alter its digital foot. Take for instance
74885:
7 + 4 + 8 + 8 + 5 is 32, and 3 + 2 is 5.
9 + 7 + 4 + 8 + 8 + 5 reduces, likewise,
to 5.
True-to-type
in any combination every time.
Try
it.
And
if it doesn’t come, then wait.
In
waiting
hope
to crack the coming skill-
set
to abide it.
Restless
We stand aside & gaze across
the yard, the garden, shade
between the berms & weight of air.
The outer lights are dark,
the inner string completely lit: How’s that?
Something like a hum, a buzz—
a rabbit in a smoky coat
lopes over, jolts, pricks up its
ears.
This smile of yours—coquettish—says,
It must be faulty contact.
Or else some kind of sly
low-voltage pitch.
You can’t rebut a hum, a buzz,
the evening breeze along the
trees.
The brush of something sudden
from behind … a nubby work-shirt?
That flutter-
body feeling, too, tip-
toeing in the gloaming—so restless,
undomestic.
(One
thinks of Schadenfreude
tales
in which a casual rashness
fractures
lives.)
Elana Wolff lives and works in Thornhill, Ontario—the ancestral land of the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nations. Elana’s work has recently appeared (or is forthcoming) in The Antigonish Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry 2024, DUSIE, FreeFall, Galaxy Brain, Juniper, The Nashwaak Review, Prairie Fire, and Yolk. Her cross-genre Kafka-quest work, FAITHFULLY SEEKING FRANZ, was released with Guernica Editions in fall 2023.