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    One Thing — Then Another: Poems
    One Thing — Then Another: Poems
    One Thing — Then Another: Poems
    Ebook84 pages30 minutes

    One Thing — Then Another: Poems

    By Claire Kelly

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    About this ebook

    A poetic response to the tumult of a move across country

    One Thing — Then Another is a collection of poetry divided into three unique sections: “East” explores the constraints of living under the poverty line in a have-not province. “And” is a long poem about moving in a U-Haul across the prairies during an ice storm. “West” considers what it means to live in the have-est of have provinces and trying to acclimate to that alongside an ever-present drought.

    The poems are largely about contrast: east to west, flood to aridity, poverty to comfort, small town to city. Throughout this accessible, smart, and funny collection, there are many descriptions of apocalyptic upheaval to reflect the feelings of disruption that often accompany relocation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherECW Press
    Release dateApr 16, 2019
    ISBN9781773053141
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      Book preview

      One Thing — Then Another - Claire Kelly

      One Thing — Then Another

      Poems

      Claire Kelly

      Contents

      EAST

      Yesterday I thought winter had given up

      Cool Enough to Sink a Ship

      Stories My Father Told

      Neighbours Are Wormholes

      Short-Term Desires

      Tick, Tick, Tick Went the Machine in the Bushes (a post-pre-post-apocalyptic poem)

      Sophocles’s Jalopy

      Spring Solstice Blues

      How to Invoke the Patron Saint of Procrastination: St. Anti-Expeditusia

      Every Dusk, Mothertongue. Mothertonguing Every Dusk.

      Out(r)age

      Trappings

      Renters in pyjamas

      A Millennial’s Poem

      THEN

      Westward U-Haul Gothic

      WEST

      In the Land of Cinematic Drought

      i) Spit’s all that’s holding me together.

      ii) We don’t do anything right now.

      iii) Water’s precious. Sometimes may be more precious than gold.

      iv) No man needs nothing.

      v) Now pick up what you can and run.

      Avoiding East-Coast Nostalgia Out West

      One Thing — Then Another

      Nobody Every Day Keeps Saying Nothing

      How Turkeys Become City-Dwellers in Edmonton

      Steady Work if You Can Get It

      Boyle Street Triptych

      D2O

      A March Commuter Considers Newton’s Third Law

      Her Pillow Smells of the Special

      The There, There, There

      My Grade Six Meteorology Lessons Help Me Categorize Pedestrians

      Turtles All the Way Down

      Notes

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Copyright

      To wait staff and librarians.

      To eagles, crows, and magpies.

      To the Trans-Canada and Yellowhead Highways.

      To Fredericton. To Edmonton.

      East

      The west stands for relocation, the east

      for lost causes.

      —Karen Solie, Bitumen

      Yesterday I thought winter had given up

      all its images: white worn out,

      utter glut of neutral.

      But today, weird

      mitt-ruts.

      Snowbank

      etchings

      from kids

      dawdling

      their hands

      to school;

      overhead another storm

      isn’t breaking

      but is moving on:

      the elm-edge and the cloud-edge

      slotting into each other.

      As if the tree picked up

      the sky secondhand,

      and wears it—

      a sapphire heavened hoodie

      in the black and white film

      of early March.

      Then,

      expertly,

      the elm-clutch

      lets loose, disrobes.

      A sliver of blue expands,

      becomes a sluice, a gorge,

      becomes the whole

      damned naked winter

      flouncing down a side street

      shoving her hands

      knuckle-deep

      in the bank.

      Cool Enough to Sink a Ship

      I wanna be cool the way Patti Smith says

      coool.

      Take a peeler and scrape

      away these tough bits. Gnarly

      as a knuckle sandwich.

      Oh don’t croon it, baby. Siren it. Lure

      my ships in.

      Hey Joe,

      drop that pea shooter,

      take me

      on a cruise I can’t afford

      and don’t want to go on.

      There’s me bypassing

      portholes and ice sculptures,

      eyeing floatation devices.

      There’s me finagling bouillabaisse

      and breadsticks

      for the

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