Wallace, Gillian

Canada, (b. 1958)

Dinner Time

  1. When you meet, sausage is
  2. curled, soft links in
  3. brown paper unfurling.
  4. It’s a brief
  5. greeting before the hot
  6. sizzle
  7. of oil, the pop of tight
  8. skin browning. Quick
  9. while they
  10. fry, slice
  11. the onions, the tears, inhale
  12. the spice
  13. rising, throw
  14. the white rings
  15. in, the garlic, stir
  16. the hot scent
  17. round, then let
  18. your wooden spoon pile
  19. the toasted
  20. buns high.

© Gillian Wallace. Unpublished manuscript, courtesy of the author..

Editor’s Note:

The poem above is the product of several drafts which Wallace has been kind enough to share with us on her blog. You can read about how the first of these Sausage poems became the second and led to the third at Grilling Poetry.

About the Poet:

Gillian Wallace, (b. 1958), is a Canadian poet. Having earned her BA in music (performance) at the University of Western Ontario, she went on to do graduate work (MA Toronto, PhD Ottawa) in the psychology of religion, writing her thesis on original sin. She has worked as an editor and copyeditor.

Her poems have been published in various journals including Descant, The Antigonish Review, Room, and This Magazine. In 2009, she won Arc Poetry Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize and in 2010, she was named a Hot Ottawa Voice by Ottawa’s Tree Reading Series. She is currently putting together the manuscript for her first poetry collection while also continuing to work on novels, polishing her first one to be publisher ready (learner ones lie buried in a drawer) and editing the first draft of another one. [DES-08/14]

Additional information:

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