Indexical Elegies (3 page)

You can lead a tourist to the Red River

but you can't make him drink himself to death

It's Saturday evening

I'll be at home, fucking up locutions

Sunday morning

I'll be at the floodway burying Saturday

STOP KNOWING HOW I AM

When the punchline is chlorine

you transgraze, catch cold

When the punchline is Advair

the side effect is death

When the punchline is adjunct

high on grad school Sudafed

When the punchline is prairie

periodicals spiral

When the punchline is hockey

tell it antiseptic

Stifled by dust

stunted by stricture

When the punchline is stop

CIVIC POEM

The poet, not as priest, but lover

The novelist, not as druid, but drunk

and shaking off careerist rust

but almost constantly shaking

and therefore displeased

but not completely displeasured

and, yes, health concerns

but no, not concerned

and they are tired of lessons

but the poets are pictograph sick

and how you get back from that fissure

but why you won't come

and the fissure divides the priests from the lovers

but the druids and the drunks mix implicit

and for some reason you like it in winter

but the adverbs returning

and the full rash

but the half-life left

and the votive, the semaphore

but the shrinking
ex voto

and you know where to find you

but you hate civic poems

DYING IN WINNIPEG

Don't read me wrong –

I plan on dying in Winnipeg

In a strange way I

believe Winnipeg is where everything always dies:

Grandfathers, clock radios, Chevrolets

faith, journalists, fine-tip pens

Earle Nelson, hockey dads

your best friend from the old street …

I will let the rush-hour dust or the blowing

snow or the dance-hall fumes fill my lungs

I will simply wait, let my side-splitting body

fail under the flattering lights in the hallway

Of the underfunded Concordia Hospital

and don't dream of visiting

But listen, there's a show tonight

at the legion hall

And I have half a liver left and

a hatchback with a quarter tank

I'm not hard to be had

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Elizabeth Bachinsky, Darren Bifford, Jason Camlot, Rachel Cyr, Tara Flanagan, Lilly Fiorentino, John Goldbach, David McGimpsey, Evan Munday, Sachiko Murakami, Ian Orti, Marisa Grizenko, Christina Palassio,Mike Spry,Darren Wershler.

My family.

Special thanks to Kevin Connolly, a wonderful editor.

Special thanks to Alana Wilcox for her friendship, guidance and patience.

The Nicole Brossard epigraph is from
Lovhers
.

The John Berryman epigraphs are from
Dream Songs
.

The Gilbert Sorrentino epigraph is from
Corrosive Sublimate
.

The Charles Sanders Peirce epigraph is from ‘What Is a Sign?'

The Robert Kroetsch epigraph is from
The Hornbooks of Rita K
.

The Jessica Grim epigraph is from
Fray
.

Earlier versions of some of these poems have appeared in
The Walrus
,
Jacket
,
Prism
,
The Capilano Review
,
Scratching the Service: The Post-
Prairie Landscape
(Plug-in Institute of Contemporary Art, 2008). ‘Mentholism' and ‘Little Grey Chevette' were originally written for broadcast on cbc Radio One. Thanks to cbc.

‘Famous Grey Chevette' is for Christopher Charney.

‘Transprairie' is for Louis Cabri, who suggested the term.

The ‘Indexical Elegies' sequence is for Robert Allen, in memoriam.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jon Paul Fiorentino is the author of the novel
Stripmalling
, which was shortlisted for the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and three poetry collections, including
The
Theory of the Loser Class
, which was shortlisted for the A. M. Klein Prize. He lives in Montreal, where he teaches writing at Concordia University, edits
Matrix
magazine and runs Snare Books.

Typeset in My Underwood and Adobe Caslon Printed and bound at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane, 2010

This print run includes a limited edition of 52 geographically challenged copies, lettered and signed by the author.

Edited by Kevin Connolly
Designed by Alana Wilcox
Author photo by Marisa Grizenko

Coach House Books
80 bpNichol Lane
Toronto m5s 3j4
Canada

416 979 2217
800 367 6360

[email protected]
www.chbooks.com