4 Poems by Claudia Coutu Radmore

work is x, y is play yami kawaii the outer expression of inner sadness the addition of a sickelement to the cute brings youth to life when otherwise that kind of darkness often causes their death hang on to the discovery in a gold mine more than a mile and a half below the earth of a microbe species that’s been thriving for 20 million years; many wonder about the meaning of life no one asks about the meaning of death while few think of the fluid instability patterns on top of a spherical soap bubble in a kitchen sink but what if you could reason faster and type directly from your brain as neural dust is now able to do knowing the real work is the change within for if a is success in life, then a equals x plus y plus z where work is x, y is play, and z might be the capacity to bewilder astransformations are never the clear-cut affair we expect them to be here is a shot of bad news: the world is facing a global tequila shortage―why is not as simple as you might think why is an onion―but from poe we get that all we see and seem is but a dream within a dream and sometimes the dog doesn’t actually have to bark truth is not single there can be  no simple truth on this much-dappled morning the flock of clouds frayed like overly-laundered collars and the floating area around words tossing us into another world that glistens with the imaginary, with what keeps all cute  possibles alive …z might be keeping your mouth shut. Einstein why is not… Stephen White, Harm’s Way to see if it is round    this wandering in a sea of people anchor lifted all of it oddly pointless and confusing the pearl on a gold string that dangles at the throat a feeling the music is mocking you a laceration of the skin or spectres that eclipse a stormy intent the small drop of sweat that rivers between breasts a city dumps 46 million litres of raw sewage into its river you turn the world over in your mind to see if it is still round spring snowstorm swallows huddle on a branch its graceful arc cleaves from that to this the rain spits at the window tree roots muscle their way up from soil at their moorings boats flirt with water the whole of nature squirms with pleasure a garden suspended somewhere among the faded embers of second thoughtthrough which we plow our shadows our  seething  questions raw vocabulary and water from a place beyond thoughtwhere language originates to where it resides procedure takes us halfway there after that we need raw something else each thought crumbles falls to pieces that fly off in all directions and often return  broken, rarely whole nothing raw can be polished or even forced into a pattern asking what love has to do with it nothing is flawless not even on the surface people on a beach stare into themselves the air is only movement and raw the living infinite often exhausting always vast close your eyes, you’ll see more my heart loses its footing i’ve been trying to see through flowing water do you want me to stop? no no i don’t want you  to stop. stop. the breast for sappiness    the whole idea seems inconceivably distant like something half recalled from childhood disney misremembered as  if   our   brains  have  grown  up absent the wiring capable of appreciating that being unhappy at times does not mean we are unhappy we all get caught even those who cannot say their worms correctly or use the wrong worms entirely so that no one underhands a bird they are spraying still they are on a breast for sappiness a constrained model constructed in the brain a rock in a river unseen except for the curl of foam when the current knocks against it a mist of seething we are cheerful but somewhat unsettled become accustomed to chuckle as minor detail or stylish accessory scratch that asinine explanation that happiness means to be with god it’s the wiring isn’t it that means we lurch all our wives for the all-holy spot of mould while a seagull hangs unnoticed in the sunset and ravel’s g major piano concerto roams the primeval cave making  all  your cells  quiver  like feathers on  fish Bionote Claudia Coutu Radmore’s daylight hangs on was long-listed for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize.Accidentals (2011, Apt. 9 Press, Ottawa), won the 2011 bpNichol Chapbook Award; the poem, where language forms, placed second in the 2011 Bliss Carman Poetry Awards. A series of poems, sea oyster leaf, sea olive: Fogo, was short-listed for the prestigious Malahat Long Poem prize, 2017, and will be published in 2018 as a chapbook by The Alfred Gustav Press, Vancouver, in 2018. the business of isness (2017) and fish spine picked clean (2018) by Éditions des petits nuages, Montreal are her latest books.  a minute or two/ without remembering and Your Hands Discover Me/Tes mains me découvrent were published in 2010.