The Single Life
Eye play in My Bed
These Days
without a bed mate
I turn on My Phone
& check
My Rooftop Views
I choose My Underwear
very carefully
& Eye use The Toilet
with Its fickle plumbing
next door to My Very Own
Accommodations
Eye play in My Bed
These Days
without a bed mate
I turn on My Phone
& check
My Rooftop Views
I choose My Underwear
very carefully
& Eye use The Toilet
with Its fickle plumbing
next door to My Very Own
Accommodations
Eye Claim
Responsibility
for 9/11
and Quite a Responsibility
It Is:
I have not sung a song
in honour of
Destruction-ism
(My New Art Form)
I have hung
M(eye) First Husband’s Love Letter
upon M(eye) Refrigerator
The Hawk Deck 8:49am
I love My Corny Apparition
of A Rainbow
in My Coffee Cup
seen only as I drink
— I checked to see where
It was coming from
and as I nod My Head
The Delightful Glitter
zooms through The Refraction
of My Eye-wear
as I stand in The Eastern Sun
THE COAST GUARD, Shelburne, N.S., Tuesday, July 20th, 1993 — 1B
SATELLITE ART FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS
by Harold Hart
Joanna Hyde of Shelburne has
been busy recently in her back-
yard painting the design of a four-
teen point maple leaf on a huge
40 by 30 foot map of Canada.
–
The fourteen points mark loca-
tions in Labrador and Quebec
where Hyde would like to position
light reflecting surfaces to reflect
star-like points of light in the out-
line of a maple leaf into outer
space.
–
The large map arrived in Shel-
burne from Ottawa on May 17
where it had been hanging on an
outside wall of the National Arts
Centre. It was put there by the
Canadian Conference of the Arts
earlier in the year in an effort to
pressure the Federal Govern-
ment to stop cutting funding for
arts programs. It remained there
until the April 26 budget was
passed.
–
Joanna learned about the map
from an article in The Chronicle
Herald. Being interested in what
is called public art – the kind of
art which is large and displayed
outdoors – Joanna decided she
wanted the map. She contacted
the coordinator of the Canadian
Conference of the Arts and was
told she could have the map if she
would pay the shipping charges.
Joanna agreed and wound up the
new owner for just less than two
hundred dollars.
–
The map consists of twelve sec-
tions that were circulated to
more than 150 art galleries,
theatres, and schools in each
province where signatures were
affixed to protest government
funding cutbacks for the arts.
Once joined together the pieces
make a huge map of the country
with more than 400,000 signatures
appearing on it…
–
“Well, what is its weight?”
“Oh, it’s Dead Weight.”
“That’s OK. I just cremated
My Mother —
She didn’t weigh very much.”
–
After She painted Her 14-point Maple Leaf
Joanna lay down
and almost died.
She almost died
for years and years.
Long after one husband
cut up the map for tarps
to cover wood piles
at Her First Marital Home
Joanna revived eventually
on poetry and bird song
to find in the Summer of 2016
the abandoned map sections —
one with moss and ferns growing
out of it —
With the help of Her Adult Children
She retrieved three surviving pieces
of The Giant “Ties That Bind”
and dragged them across the county
to The East Side of Her Hawk House.
She laid them out
busy in Her Back Yard
hosing and scrubbing a 23-year build up
of Nova Scotia’s Forested Fate
stained and distressed
front and back
to dry in the sun
with the help of a couple of old towels —
not Her Grey One —
there was left no semblance of the configuration
of Canada — only the ghost
of a few red lines
a few patches of indelible signatures
and one partial strip of big black letters
along what must have been
the bottom — in English and French:
“…FUNDING FOR ARTS AND CULTURE”
–
She arranged the pieces
some still edged by sturdy grommets —
into what became a nearly perfect square
measuring 27 feet by 23.5 feet:
She had Her Canvas.
She would paint on the BACK.
She folded up the three sections
and with the help of Her Second Husband
She piled Them onto the floor
of The Hawk Utility Room —
the floor She had been using
for Her Most Recent Paintings
and as She writes, She thinks
of building a platform
a stage
perhaps next summer
if there is the same lack of rain
as this one —
She would secure The Triptych
upside down, with the foundation
of Canadian signatures — what’s left of the original
400,000
and setting up Her Gallons of Paint
with broom and hose nearby
She would paint and sweep and hose
Stratosphere of The Universe
The Hawk Dining Room 1:50pm
Yesterday I went back
to the home of My Children’s
earliest childhood —
it stood with dry grass
recently mowed —
a stone bench I had forgotten
under the apple
where I planted myrtle
slowly spreading —
I found My Red Leather Baseball Mitt
left-handed
in an upstairs closet
full of toys
and in the hatchway to the attic
I hoisted My Shoe-less Son
now 28
one-footed upon My Clasped Hands —
He was looking for My Early Sketches
a mysterious tube
of blue-prints displaying the roof of #5 World Trade Center
We failed to find —
as He came down
He pulled the light bulb string
straining to reach it
and when He let go
the slightly-too-short string
sprung back on itself
without the light turning off
and so My Greatest First Love
had to step into My Hands
a second time
He lowered Himself finally
to a painted kitchen chair
flexing His Lumberjack Muscles
— His Right Upper Arm still scarred
from when He toddled
to a cup of too-hot herb tea
unwittingly set within Peak’s easy reach
upon Our old kitchen table
in the little wooded house His Father and I restored
to cherish
The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 9:33am
My Life is in Order:
the grass is being cut
after three weeks —
a super load of laundry is on
and I feel like
cooking something
decent tonight
for My Hard-working Husband
who had to take pain-killers last night
— He’s still stoned —
and is going into the office
@ Noon
The Hawk Queen Bed 8:38am
I didn’t want to get up
this morning
after standing prostrate
in the window cross
of the TV Room
for two hours
after My X Husband
hung up on Me
when I asked Him
about My Paintings
He had dumped
and while I stood there
with My Arms out-stretched
I saw A Speck
on the ceiling
and I revered It
as The Speck
of My Abortion
He forced Me to have
The Hawk West Desk Window 11:15am
EYE am Star Collector
X-traodinaire
EYE stick Their molten surfaces
to M(EYE) finger tips
and drop Them into
Their Little White Star Box
housing M(EYE) Ring
of Shimmering Rose Design
The Hawk Kitchen Outpost 10:22am
My Ten-thousand Square Foot Painting
still EXISTS
albeit underground
in two unwieldy bundles
somewhere within the confines
of The Orangetown Dump
in Rockland County, New York
where I grew up