McKay, Don

I Scream You Scream

1. Waking Jesus sudden riding a scream like a
2. train braking metal on metal on
3. metal teeth receiving signals from a dying star sparking
4. off involuntarily in terror in all directions in the
5. abstract incognito in my
6. maidenform bra in an expanding universe in a where’s
7. my syntax thrashing
8. loose like a grab that like a
9. look out like a
10. live wire in a hurricane until
11.  
12. until I finally tie it down:
13. it is a pig scream
14. a pig scream from the farm across the road
15. that tears this throat of noise into the otherwise anonymous dark,
16. a noise not oink or grunt
17. but a passage blasted through constricted pipes, perhaps
18. a preview of the pig’s last noise.
19.  
20. Gathering again toward sleep I sense
21. earth’s claim on the pig.
22. Pig grew, polyped out on the earth like a boil
23. and broke away.
24. But earth
25. heals all flesh back beginning with her pig,
26. filling his throat with silt and sending
27. subtle fingers for him like the meshing fibres in a wound
28. like roots
29.  
30. like grass growing on a grave like a snooze
31. in the sun like fur-lined boots that seize
32. the feet like his nostalgie de la boue like
33. having another glass of booze like a necktie like a
34. velvet noose like a nurse
35.  
36. like sleep.

Setting the Table

1. 1. Knife
2.  
3. who comes to the table fresh
4. from killing the pig, edge
5. of edges,
6. entry into zip.
7. Knife
8. who can swim as its secret
9. through the dialogue or glimmer
10. in a kitchen drawer. Who first appeared
11. in God’s hand to divide
12. the day from the night, then the sheep
13. from the goats, then from the other
14. sheep, then from their comfortable
15. fleeces. Nothing sinister in this except
16. it had to happen and it was the first
17. to have to. The imperative
18. mood. For what we are about to take
19. we must be grateful.
20.  
21. 2. Fork
22.  
23. a touch of kestrel,
24. of Chopin, your hand with its fork
25. hovers above the plate, or punctuates
26. a proposition. This is the devil’s favourite
27. instrument, the fourfold
28. family of prongs: Hard Place,
29. Rock, Something You Should Know,
30. and For Your Own Good. At rest,
31. face up, it says,
32. please, its tines
33. pathetic as an old man’s fingers on a bed.
34. Face down it says
35. anything that moves.
36.  
37. 3. Spoon
38.  
39. whose eloquence
40. is tongueless, witless, fingerless,
41. an absent egg.
42. Hi Ho, sing knife and fork, as off they go,
43. chummy as good cop and bad cop,
44. to interrogate the supper. Spoon waits
45. and reflects your expression,
46. inverted, in its tarnished moonlight. It knows
47. what it knows. It knows hunger
48. from the inside
49. out.

Nocturnal Animals

1. Another cup of coffee. Southern Ontario
2. surrounds this kitchen like well-fed flesh.
3. If I had
4. a cigarette right now I’d smoke it like an angry campfire
5. burn it into the unblemished body of the night.
6. Lonely is a knife whose handle fits the mind
7.  
8. too well, its oldest and most hospitable friend.
9. On Highway 22
10. a truck is howling for Sarnia or London.
11. In my garage
12. the aging Buick is dreaming the commercial
13. in which he frees my spirit into speed while an eagle
14. in slow motion
15. beats applause above our heads.
16.  
17. Another cup of coffee.
18. Two years ago the wolves took shape
19. in Lobo Township, lifting the tombstone of its name
20. to lope across these snowy fields
21. between the woodlots
22. spectral
23. legless as wind, their nostrils
24. wide with news of an automated pig barn
25. waiting for them like an all-night restaurant.
26.  
27. Shot, their bodies wisped away, their eyes
28. stubbed out.

The Dumpe

An old dance of which no one knows anything except that the word is generally used in a way that suggests a melancholy cast of expression.
— The Oxford Companion to Music

1.  
2. No one remembers what is
3. danced to the echoless drum one
4. one
5. one
6. one or you can simply
7. slam the door.
8. When you feel the spirit move you
9. plant your foot. Stamp each
10. butt into the pavement,
11. Close your right hand loosely
12. round a disconnected gearshift.
13. You never asked for this. This
14. is what you got. Forget
15. “refining figuration of the human
16. form in space” and other psychosomatic noise.
17. Wear your luggage.
18. Get in line.
19. Think of the alligator and the pig.
20. They never asked for this.
21. Drop the disembodied body. Stamp.
22. Forget.