National Poetry Month : Liam Burke,

 

the man himself

“Can your joy be bound by a glass river?
          Is death a fishbone in your hand?”
                     – Sheila Watson, “The Double Hook”

standing still among headstones with the sun hanging heavy
between rows I pray for attention from a broad and
regal monarch circling me with geological certainty
imagine him the spirit of al      golden at noon     whispering
something profound and gentle     such as “don’t be sad
for the dead    they are only sleeping the sleep we all long for”
small comfort when I don’t want to come back up the trail
and see the baby bird again, lost to some brutality,
sleeping the sleep we all long for what peace can
I find there among the suddenly purple asters + the feathers +
half a rusted hulk of some abandoned car       our rectory
+ in the county I suppose we are all of us boundaried by skin
that never stops itching     bugmad and nettle-crazed
sweating I swat a dragonfly who falls in the earth    lays quiet
perhaps now fatally injured + preparing for the longed-for sleep -
and on the way home steel sheets hang across the sky and
shutter out the ambered trails of summer       the road smells
    of honey    malt   +   tastes of sumac        juniper
and in low + lonely fields + among select
vantage points in the trees where the sheet clouds
silence sharp sibilants         crows begin small talk
       chat scouting reports       or run scales    anxiously
warming up the orchestra     tuning the murder to
herald the bleak news of every creature in the county
now sleeping the sleep we all long for

 

 

 

 

Liam Burke (he/him/himbo) lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. He is the winner of the 2023 Diana Brebner Prize, and is most recently the co-author of Orbital Cultivation with Manahil Bandukwala (Collusion, 2021) and machine dreams with natalie hanna (Collusion, 2021) which was shortlisted for the 2022 bpNichol Chapbook Award. His poem “Can we locate souls in space? The pairing problem, solved”, co-written with Manahil Bandukwala, was shortlisted for the 2022 Austin Clarke Award.