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STEVIE HOWELL


The Rusty Toque | Issue 10 | Poetry | June 30, 2016

I NEVER SAW A THING IN THE WILD FEEL SORRY FOR ITSELF


You can’t catalog a litany.    
                                                                        
 

I’m trying to figure out                                                                                                                  
what to do with the remainder of my life.                                                            
I taught for decades. Was demoted to subbing. But showed   
               
up at the wrong schools. At 19, I earned a  
                                              
basketball scholarship. But fell apraxic. 
                                       
One dose of Remicade stripped myelin. Unsheathed     
                         
involuntary laugher at monotone    
                                                          
voices, and multiples like SALE! SALE! SALE!, or crowds.    
                     
I’ve worked as a counsellor, and    

You can catalog a litany.                                                                              
 


I see the cracks in things. You                                                                                
from afar, for instance. Given time, something              
                           
will strike one of us. Then what? Bedside. Recognizing the    
                
grip-strength of a certain hand without needing                                                
the voice. Who am I to play God? Not w/birth           
                               
or death or health—but forgiveness. Mercy can be          
                      
misplaced as easily as keys. Eyeglasses      
                                               
in the fridge. Remote in the liquor cabinet.        
                                      
I’d do anything to re-gift                                                  

this love for you, this empathy, this        

                                       
 
pathetic mimicry, to—       
                                                                          
inject concrete in sponge, remodel as              
                                          
bone. It aches malignant, but I admire with my whole                                                              
heart that you won’t miss me, or won’t say so, or                                                
won’t feel mortal, or won’t suffer regret—you     
                                   
Stoic, you stone. I never saw a wild thing    
                                  
feel sorry for itself, the way I should know       
                                        
better, the way you don’t. If I’m wrong about what                  
              
“they” feel, I’d be the last to know.           
 
*title and 4th/3rd last line refs D. H. Lawrence poem, “Self-Pity”               

HOLLOW ALL THE WAY DOWN

A hand in a curtain,
soil on fire
 
 
He can still play the piano
but can’t remember where we are
 
 
North England, by the sea, 1983,
might as well be Centralia, Pennsylvania
 
 
underground, coal that won’t cease
smouldering for _____ miles
 
 
and X # of years.
Can’t snuff itself. Tried.
 
 
Every three minutes his breaker resets,
0:00, then 0:01 etc.,
 
 
his wife emerges from the other side
of the wall and it’s a new birth
 
 
the first birth, the big bang, ecstatic.
His eyes, his luck! Doesn’t know

 
she’s been here all day, all week,
all month, all year. Was just
 
 
mucking about in the garden.
He still knows his love—love lives
 
 
in a different region
from the one carved out by the clot.

A town with a population <8
grumbles in rockers lined up
 
 
on a house porch perched on stilts.
Soil remediation, lap quilts.
 
 
A buckled road too weak to hold
anything but foot traffic. Graffitied.
 
 
A person procures a tool
and the sensation is charged,
 
 
metal sheathed in chi,
I could say nothing or everything

 
hi mom!
more zeal!
 
 
you do you.
for a good time, call 911.
A black lab bolts like he broke
through a fence to the real field


(was released from a hatchback,
but pretends). He bounds


elliptically, b/c the magnets
are stronger here. What is he


eating now. Must he always
eat cellulose and scat?


Owner hollers, claps, and lab
coils reflexively into a c-clamp.


Braced for the smack.
A hand in a curtain,


soil on fire,
neurons de-linking,
a man clings to a woman
he can’t place, another person
 
 
is a carbon sink,
a man’s best friend is his diary
 
 
it’s hollow all the way down and
I am waking up I am
 
 
finally awake, no now I am
actually awake, fully and totally,
 
 
no now I am awake for real,
no now I am really awake, no now
 
 
the secret’s out, to turn
the town slo-mo into a quarry
 
 
exploding homes, civil suits,
a gossiping chorus. They say
 
 
I know it in my heart,
I just know it. But you
 
 
can’t know anything in your heart.
STEVIE HOWELL is an Irish-Canadian writer and worker. A first collection of poetry, Sharps, was released in 2014, and was a finalist for the 2015 Gerald Lampert Award. Poems have been anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry (2014 and 2015) and The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library journal, So It Goes (2015). Poetry has appeared in The Walrus, Hazlltt, Maisonneuve, Eighteen Bridges, Geist, and Prelude. When not writing, Stevie studies psychology and works as a psychometrist. www.steviehowell.ca
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