3. Castaway
dear sailor the wind rushes through this day, a long series of gestures, but the sky is blue electric. i eat mangos that have fallen from trees, can’t bear to pick the fruit away from its perceived destiny. i cast the stones out to you, a signifier of my intentions, as my hands drip with mango juice, my lips stained a pulpy red. we take the world into ourselves in so many ways, dear sailor, with the breath line of language, the wind an ellipsis on our tongues.
4. Castaway
dear sailor i have been blown further south where green birds flutter around my head like a crown. the chorus of light here reminds me of you, calm on your high sea. the moment approaches as thoughts of you unfurling sails rise and drift with the lightest of clouds.
5. Castaway
dear sailor i wonder what pleasures you imagine discovering across the terrain of my body. i could write that my chest heaves in anticipation of your tongue at the back of my neck, but i might mean something else. for i am, indeed, alone dear sailor, while all hands are on deck on your windswept ship.
6. Castaway
i have set sail, one hour in north america and already i’m angry, my ship delayed for hours. i need your beach to keep me calm, the sound of water as deep as your voice, so far away now. i feel completely adrift.
7. Castaway
dear sailor here the trees are red-orange and leaves the size of plates fall onto this cold beach, the sand wet and hard. i want to translate your pain into beauty, want to inhale your longing and keep it safe within me. we are alone in this, but who is more connected than a sailor and a castaway. you are a territory of heightened imaginings, a space where anything is possible.
8. Castaway
dear sailor it was not my intention to appease you, merely to say that the space of longing is exquisite and that constructing desire in language is magical and in that we are lucky. i can write that i want to run my tongue along the lithe edges of your body, taste the salt of your hidden skin, bite the sand grains at the side of your neck and make you feel me reading your body electric. i can conjure the wetness of the rain here as it runs between my breasts and even further. the tide is full. we are already together.
9. Castaway
dear sailor your words are blown over on a blustery gale, but now the sun is coming through so i know it’s you. i don’t need you to inhabit me. i aspire to something lighter, like desire free from obligation. i want to float away until i come and become what i am meant to be. i want to create you too with my tongue until you rise into what you could be with all messages finally received.
CASTAWAY: CONTEMPORARY I
economics push adrift today responsible for your/our own demise
you sell your/our time to pay the ridiculously expensive rent
sailing here is configured stupidly no rush of wind on your/our face today
phone calls will instead reveal the seventeen percent interest rate for which you/we qualify
the brink of bank accounts which add up to barely enough today flinging numeros
aesthetic splatter patterns of the newly loved form surrender what art could be
your/our big payout comes washing ashore but recedes almost as quickly as it came
wow that blue bottle was so pretty before it broke the top first and then the rest
the lights form a kind of fire to signal a festive hopefulness here or to show
how the light could get in if you/we wrote it that way here for a day or so airy and perfectly pinned down
CASTAWAY: CONTEMPORARY II
so sailor you/we arrive on the digital wind
sunset sailboat photos imagine salt feted
pleasure some dangling epic reunion
the intention to pursue and voila
you/we wash up on this particular beach
your/our myriad skills some dance of welcome
local satiation rituals sparkle across smooth
weathered skin you/we know that beauty now
exists in the recognition of this long awaited
event formerly figured as rescue but now
merely the most ordinary of happy endings
knots so easily fastened it takes your/our breath
up into the ether again to hover and then push
of touching
PERPETUAL
time keeps moving
motion matters in
moments of discontent
spin makes the difference
so lightly you/we continue
to shine off the rocks of this
particular island figured
as a phone booth where
the phone never stops ringing
and it’s always good news
you/we got it! you/we won it!
you/we finally did it! you/we
were at least nominated!
inevitable saturation fails to
bliss us out completely
so you/we continue
hello you/we say again
anticipation and reception
align and the desire side
of the curve slips and so
it gushes forth without end
PERPETUAL OCEAN
le spirale c’est ça
fluid eddy reigns
dynamic onslaught
vast directionals like
whispers over texting
i hail you pressing into
glass screens this stream
without end because you/we
always text goodnight at least
treble as far as the eye can see
so much blue even bluer than real
today the ocean looks like a photograph
as it spins HD articulation better than it sounds
you crash here again a fire burning heat
pillowcases such comfort embedded in a sofa
light rain perpetually falling tonight gold eyes close
and you fall (or are pulled) in
A CRITIQUE OF THE APOCALYPSE: CODA
nothing much happened
some jellyfish washed ashore
some birds fell from the sky
a bear rode a garbage truck downtown
tsunamis’ debris washed ashore (earlier than expected)
a tsunami-shaped cloud rolled across the Alabama sky
attention spans dropped
capitalism was “literally” critiqued
the protestor was the person of that year
Jeff Wall made some more everyday surrealism
someone proposed a sarcastic font
trash lands grew, plastic continued to particle oceans
a new habitable-zone planet was confirmed
making Another Earth seem prescient
if 600 years ahead of its time (did people care less?)
you/we misunderstood things, were easily embarrassed
developing brashness as a stance, but still seeking
a way to proceed, propelled to a bench by a waterway
the trace of your/our palms, hugging the fog
and finding love at the end of it all.
THE ENDS OF THE EARTH: CODA
On Midway Atoll albatross
feed plastic to their young
what looks like food leaves
carcasses riddled with trash
among the saddest things
on earth discovered via Twitter
RT @djweir RT @newfoundbrand RT This is the most disturbing thing I’ve seen in a long time:
http://bit.ly/4cGoDg
REFERENCES
Baudrillard, Jean. “Telemorphosis” in CRTL [SPACE]. Thomas Y. Levin, Ursula Frohne, and Peter Weibel, eds. Karlsruhe: Center for Art and Media, 2002.
Bixby, Jerome. “It’s a Good Life.” Science Fiction Hall of Fame.
Derksen, Jeff. “How High Is the City, How Deep Is Our Love.” Fillip. http://fillip.ca/content/how-high-is-the-city-how-deep-is-our-love
Jordan, Chris. “Midway Message from the Gyre,” October 2009.
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11
Randolph, Jeanne. The Ethics of Luxury. Toronto: YYZ Books, 2007.
Sterling, Bruce. “The Ends of the Earth.” Wired. Issue 12.04 April 2004.
NOTES
page numbers refer to the print edition
Page 24: http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/09/12/3314107.htm
Page 26: http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2011/08/silicon-valley-computer
Page 28: http://flavorwire.com/197252/shocking-photos-of-mozambiques-trash-land
Page 29: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/09/20/dime-store-alchemy-joseph-cornell/
Page 32: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2011/oct/05/artist-pipilotti-rist-eyeball-massage-video
Page 41: http://io9.com/5401749/seven-ways-the-world-could-end-in-2012
Page 42: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/10/7-billion-population
Page 98: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/7009056027/
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you especially to Michael Holmes and ECW Press for maintaining this poetic relationship for these thirteen (lucky) years. Thank you to the Canada Council for the Arts for giving me time and space to pursue this work. Thank you to my sons, Brennan and Blake, for ongoing hilarity and love mixed together. Thank you to Nomados Press for publishing part of this work as a lovely chapbook and for ongoing support for me and my work on porches, in cafes, and with wine. Thank you to my amazing writing communities in Canada and Australia. Thank you to the editors and collectives of literary journals who have published some of this work including West Coast Line, Capilano Review, Matrix, Poetry Is Dead, Another Lost Shark, Famous Reporter (Tasmania) and The Stylus Review (Queensland). And finally, thank you to Damon, who came at the end and transformed it into a beginning.
JACQUELINE TURNER has previously published three books of poetry with ECW: Seven Into Even (2006), Careful (2003), and Into the Fold (2000). She reviews for the Georgia Straight and lectures at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She was the inaugural poet-in-residence at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane, Australia, and an artist-in-residence at Gorge Cottage in Launceston, Tasmania.
Copyright © Jacqueline Turner, 2013
Published by ECW Press
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Turner, Jacqueline, 1965–
The ends of the earth / Jacqueline Turner.
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-77041-114-2
Also issued as: 978-1-77090-369-2 (PDF); 978-1-77090-370-8 (EPUB)
I. Title.
PS8589.U7476E64 2013 C811'.6 C2012-907515-9
Editor for the press: Michael Holmes
Cover design: Natalie Olsen
Cover images: jõni / photocase.com
Author photo: Sarah Porritt
Typesetting and production: Carolyn McNeillie
The publication of The Ends of the Earth has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, and by the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities, and the contribution of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. The marketing of this book was made possible with the support of the Ontario Media Development Corporation.