THE RUSTY TOQUE
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JENNIFER LOVEGROVE


The Rusty Toque | Issue 11 | Poetry | November 30, 2016

FISH IN WINTER


​Bright paths sinew
through shoulder-deep snow
to a pond slowly crystallizing.
 
Wet plywood shacks
list and slump, injured
on the slush-edged shore.
 
Then four unusually large
paper-white fish swim by
and a sudden elation
 
surges through me
and I can’t even
swallow it back down.
 
 
*
 
An excess of tranquility
or a lack. Having true intentions.
You will get to where
 
you need to go in life.
Positive changes are afoot.
Hard work lies ahead.
 
Prosperity in economic activities.
You will indirectly affect
someone’s illness.
 
People tend to gossip about you.
Holding back anger.
Reviewing old books.
 
 
*
 
Surgeons will guess around
characters will sabbatical
charlatans will likeness.
 
Wallpaper’s shred-deficit
your backbone downgrade
sabotages productivity.
 
Parachutist statistician
stateroom to frenzy
surrogates of wallow.
 
Showcase defeatist
your peacock excursions
will bullfrog and backfire.

I'M TIRED FROM CROUCHING

​
​Every night, the same warning
broadcast through the building:
Your uniforms are not camouflage,
just go to bed, and try
to sleep through the night.
 
I pull on my boots and go
for a walk in the dark that’s
sleep refusing to go back inside,
meaning that has long since
packed up its meagre lugs –
dry leaf, rainwater, trampoline.
 
The ATMs are fallow, I’ve gulped
the last of the Ativan
while bacteria race
up and down the steps
of city hall, cranked up
on anything they can find.
 
I’m tired from crouching,
so I lie on the sidewalk
as my night terrors
stroll by, holding hands
and window shopping.
 
That’s it. Give me
a new trap door,
a clean blanket, another
fetid father figure
to crawl back under.
 
The lights flicker off
as a bus collides
with a dark blue van.
Blood vessels bloom, tiny wet
despots, occupiers of language.
 
Then the sky lowers,
an arm snaps up,
the corners tuck under
and the night
pulls taut overhead. 

PART VAUDEVILLE

          
I crawl along a river
on my stomach.
A doe’s hind leg
stomps once, twice.
Here, there is food.
There, a stranger.
 
At the mouth,
the rest-stop ocean keens,
mistaking itself for the sun.
It bucks its gleaming back
and means to blind.
 
The deer scatter
and acrobats tumble
behind them. No clean
sails snap in time
with warm wind.
           
I stay on the beach
with the ventriloquists,
draped in wigs like the sick
or the insolent, they pluck
splinters from beneath
my fingernails, intuit
my leg back, like this.
 
The pharmacy, not
from parties or from
pathology at all.
Part vaudeville, part
floatation device.
What do they mean by
water bottle, anyway?
JENNIFER LOVEGROVE is the author of the Giller Prize longlisted novel Watch How We Walk, as well as two poetry collections: I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel and The Dagger Between Her Teeth. Her new collection of poetry Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes will be published with BookThug in 2017. Her poetry was shortlisted for the 2015 Lit POP Awards, and she has recent work in The Humber Literary Review and Taddle Creek. She divides her time between downtown Toronto and rural Ontario.
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  • Home
    • Issue 1 >
      • Creative Nonfiction: 1
      • Fiction: 1
      • Screenwriting: 1
      • Poetry: 1
      • Contributors: 1
    • Issue 2 >
      • Visual Art: 2
      • Fiction: 2
      • Poetry: 2
      • Masthead: 2
      • Contributors: 2
    • Issue 3 >
      • Poetry: 3
      • Visual Art: 3
      • Comics: 3
      • Fiction: 3
      • Reviews: 3
      • Masthead: 3
      • Contributors: 3
    • Issue 4 >
      • Prose: 4
      • Poetry: 4
      • Reviews: 4
      • Visual Art: 4
      • Contributors: 4
      • Masthead: 4
    • Issue 5 >
      • Nonfiction Kathy Acker & McKenzie Wark
      • Drama: 5
      • Prose: 5
      • Poetry: 5
      • Film: 5
      • Comics: 5
      • Reviews: 5
      • Visual Art: 5
      • Video & Sound: 5
      • Masthead: 5
      • Contributors: 5
    • Issue 6 >
      • Poetry: 6
      • Prose: 6
      • Reviews: 6
      • Film: 6
      • Visual Art: 6
      • Masthead: 6
      • Contributors: 6
    • Issue 7 >
      • Film: 7
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      • Poetry: 7
      • Reviews: 7
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      • Comics: 7
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    • Issue 8 >
      • Poetry: 8
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    • Issue 9 >
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    • Issue 10 >
      • Poetry: 10
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      • Masthead: 10
    • Issue 11 >
      • Poetry: 11
      • Prose: 11
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      • Visual Art: 11
      • Comics: 11
      • Contributors: 11
      • Masthead: 11
    • Issue 12 >
      • Poetry: 12
      • Prose: 12
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      • Visual Art: 12
      • Contributors: 12
      • Masthead: 12
    • Issue 13 >
      • Poetry: 13
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      • Masthead: 13
  • About
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