Joanna Gilman Hyde

Last night I saw Big

Dipper in the Northwest Sky —

This morning it tipped

The October sunrise

Has not happened yet —

Eye am writing in the twilight

Of my event —

Venus is suspended

Above unwarmed clouds

And the ocean shoreline

Is silhouetted

With sparse spruce

And one roof

With a complimentary porch light

Eye went around today

Dressed like Alice In Wonderland

Looking for a home

For Stratospheric Universe 

And encountered two televisions:

One in a car dealership

With a man-eating volcano

Which turned into a contemporary

“LET’S MAKE A DEAL”

(with commercials showing sick chemo patients) —

And one in a great grandmother’s kitchen

Showing Scottish and Irish gangsters

Exclaiming “fuck” (repeatedly)

In the 1800’s

I have made my bed for men

Show-stoppers

Who have yet to come

Up from my depths

To greet

My smile

Unearthed

From the belt

Of Orion

Eye have driven, pounded

Through the flames of my desire —

Fog has floated in

Around me now

And the peak of my orange/ red

Has been left behind

For some other star-struck

Bohemian

If Eye were in an alien

Space ship

I would direct the commander —

Or would I be the commander?

To put the lights on

“Flare”

To settle in for the night

On the high inshore

Seas of

Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia

Where only Time —

That Human Construct —

Would convey My Story

To The Living Souls

Of an injected —

But not rejected —

Community of

On-lookers

My grandfather used to leave

The room

If a television commercial

Was coming on —

He would excuse himself

To go “vomit”

And now his grand-daughter

Contemplates

Dressing herself in black lace

To attend a domestic

Dinner gathering

Where marijuana might be served

from “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov, page 267

“I have often noticed

that we are inclined to endow our friends

with the stability of type

that literary characters aquire

in the reader’s mind.

No matter how many times

we reopen King Lear,

never shall we find the good king

banging his tankard in high revelry,

all woes forgotten,

at a jolly reunion

with all three daughters

and their lapdogs.

Never will Emma rally,

revived by the sympathetic salts

in Flaubert’s father’s timely tear.

Whatever evolution

this or that popular character

has gone through between

the book covers,

his fate is fixed in our minds, and,

similarly,

we expect our friends to follow

this or that logical and conventional pattern

we have fixed for them.

Thus X will never compose

the immortal music

that would clash

with the second-rate symphonies

he has accustomed us to.

Y will never commit murder.

Under no circumstances

can Z ever betray us.

We have it all arranged

in our minds,

and the less often

we see a particular person

the more satisfying it is to check

how obediently he conforms

to our notion of him every time

we hear of him.

Any deviation in the fates

we have ordained

would strike us as not only anomalous

but unethical.

We prefer not to have known at all our neighbour,

the retired hot-dog stand operator,

if it turns out he has just produced

the greatest book of poetry

his age has seen.”

Somewhere in my house 1:35am

Tonight I danced

To the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s

But when the DJ asked

“What’s your favourite song?”

Eye couldn’t come up

With a single Hip Hop

Answer

My Corner Room 9:42am 

There lies a massive ship

Embanked by the horizon

Between the grey of the sky

And the grey of the ocean

Held by the silver line —

The strip of its own proportion —

Eye couldn’t see it

Otherwise