Five Poems
by MA|DE
NO PERFORMANCES TODAY
At Showmen’s Rest, first-class boneyard for circus shellbacks, the
whistling past turns over, a dirty signal pulling at the lingering quiet. A
handful of blinked-out stars from the firmament reside here, eighty-six
conjoined souls buried in a Big Top grave. Those who stumbled through
their days now tuck away in the wailing night, silent. Clowns who
always entered the ring with their right feet first, acrobats who never
whistled under canvas tents, strongmen who eschewed peanuts in their
dressing rooms, all clutching at kernels that did not protect them; they
share a final act. The pranksters that made the world gasp, who vowed
to chase more laughter than tears, were undone in their sleeping cars,
in the predawn, at Ivanhoe Interlocking, where Life slipped on a banana
peel. A dead-heading train tore into them from behind, snatching up
the tumblers and fire-eaters, ringmasters and tightrope walkers. A hot,
buttery end full of steam and kerosene. No animals were harmed. Out
of the gates of death, that universal cage, came the coterie of bears and
hippopotamuses, giraffes and rhinoceroses. Carrying the show for the
signal tower. Now, in the necropolis, the grandstanders and roustabouts
are silent for the first time, as stone elephants step into the caretaker’s
enormous shoes. Trunks sunk low, sifting the grass, they configure a
vigilant ring, genuflection for those who bowed out. Crowds, parading
their grief, come bearing the world’s cotton-candy condolences.
SKY BIRD
When the clouds took human
shape, we felt indivisible; heaven
and body, ontology as a single plane,
brittle pane. Arms out, embracing balance.
When the clouds looked like
lambs, we laid down our heads.
The cabin blanketed us in filtered air,
a leisurely middle space that transcended
the clamour of cities, the buzz of insects.
The double-bind of moving forward
while sitting still sent us daydreaming,
wistful and wispy as chemtrails scattered
on a path across the chameleon blue.
We coasted past imperceptible longitudes
and borderlines, riding the edge of
the lower stratosphere. Between the rest
of our lives and where we are now —
this is the distance we always
hoped for.
SUGARWHIP
First the stick:
and we are stuck, wind-up animals
balking at the claw, as though, if we
move slowly enough, we can suspend
the progression from egg to superpredator,
as though we might sidestep
the slippery, spiraled future, which
carries the threat of our own genetic
dearth, rich disturbance in the slush, our
grunting, sturdy resistance to blackthorn
twig dissolved across distances, hooves
deep in mud, tendrils crittering along the
double-helix twist of our next skin,
aware of nothing except the
concentrated drag of movement in the
trees
Then the carrot:
crucial, sweet, fatted like a trap, a
pleasure to tickle gill or throat, to
distract us from the imbalance of power,
for Earth is the single apex, the only
alpha, a thunder that will swallow us
like an afterthought, except for our
fullness, which grows with each growl,
heat hicupping from thorax into
waveform, vorous rasping of the animal
inside the intestine, the noise of our
wheels turning as we purr between the
carcass, mutating to stave off death,
warming into this restless, divergent
future, always choosing the brightest,
most edible ending
SUBSIDIZED HOUSING FOR SMALL BIRDS
Start right now, build
regardless of the season. Every
little nest needs a bird. Work to
make it look like it all grew
there naturally.
Delight the sapsuckers and
they will reward with frequent
visits. Should this fail, don’t
feel too badly. Few flyers
survive their first year, and
there are other kinds of
success.
Whether songbird, or kestrel,
we recognize their timbre, their
particular chitter & whine.
Shrill keys fall on sharp ears.
One oriole ate wheat. Swore
off the opulence of fruit nectar
& insects. A protest against the
coming of the suburbs.
We had to give up on
goldfinches. The birding hotline
was overrun, its tape exhausted
by reports of commonplace
marvels.
If there are starlings, look
closely at the night sky.
Anything worth seeing is worth
photographing, exposed by the
light of the moon.
See the reflections of trees &
sky in the glass, windows of
detuned opportunities. Flickers
go out with the light.
A lost iPhone vibrates against a
hummingbird song. Tweets
resurface, echoing through the
forest until someone is there to
hear them.
A scratched throat revolts. Here
we go again, arguing about
sound poetry with screech
owls. This contact call has gone
cold, won’t be answered.
It’s summer. Look out the
kitchen window: mourning
doves with broken limbs will
require treatment, or tears. We
must be aware of the land we
are dealing with.
Skeptics are breaking open
eggshells to see what’s inside.
Robins discard the gaunt,
abandon the angular and wait
for the rest.
When grey skies delimit
bluejays, our last, careless hold
on warmth is lost. Lovers will
come home bearing gifts of
roadkill.
The bones of our houses came
from the carcasses of their
trees. We replanted twin
sycamores, single poplars,
formed their roosting boxes in
the image of our own. We hold
out our hands, brimming with
sunflowers & sorghum, say it’s
for the birds.
ARBEITSLIED
when the steel rises and the voice of
the labouring world hums, cortisol
levels elevate when a noisy truck
rattles by, we duck and cover when
a car alarm dents the abiotic air,
it uncaws a crow and dream booms
into all our animal heads when the streets
sing, the sparrows in the branches of
the boulevard trees do not when
power lines hum and rubber makes
music on concrete, the chorale is
overwhelmed with new polyps,
the colours bleed into one another and
old melodies suffer when the airplanes
roar, the seasons cease to speak and
tree crickets struggle to recall
the canticles they used to dance to,
their affinity reduced to a bumbling
two-step when ships pass and
infrasound insists, humpback whales
hold elephants in their mouths, waiting,
while the chambers of the sea
look on without remark