aware it’s not interesting.
The first was draped in pure simulacra –
the woman’s with wallpaper of a photocopied letter telling of
an odd dream.
In which the third was adorned with anachronistic
Xmas and the last with just one sad halogen placed
where it’s not interesting.
The simulacra slayed me – here was this man
with mad props of bed, books, art. Present in so little,
dreaming an odd dream
unaware it’s not interesting.
THOSE ETHOS IS SAD
Take one and stall – you want
an antidote to your
customs, habits, mores.
Love to text and other verbs
in any order, you powder addiction –
take one and stall all. You want
restraint, income, imperative
productivity, tacit ascendancy. You gut new
customs, habits, mores.
Have you ever delved gutter depth
well beyond your shelter level? Dive –
take one and stall all you want.
Drag your way toward grown-ups –
they can’t love you as per their antonymous
customs, habits, mores.
Focus. You aren’t the focus of this epistle
you haven’t the synonymous heart to
take one and stall. You don’t want more
customs or habits anymore.
OPEN SOURCE
Would like to be open heart
ready, click-giddy, prepaid and pleased but
haven’t the firmware
to chance it. Never ever
no one like that sad semaphorist who
would like to be open heart
willing, instead of flailing dead signals
at newly commissioned drones that
haven’t the firmware
to land a line, or break a phrase, or
unsettle a simple notion like unfair.
Would like to be open heart
able, bogged down in emotive
drive, unabashed, aware, hinged, yet
haven’t the firmware
required for entry or trance, yes, land.
No, there is no point. I
would like to be open
source firm.
CONCORDIA
Salvation through harmony
is a fallacy: skewed, satiric saltire, a
royal gift
of cigarettes and dep wine
and the knowledge that any kind of
salvation through harmony
would not require you to learn
notation but your tone-deaf
royal gift
grub, cross-clutch self
would no longer stand.
Salvation through harmony
can only be a sick twinning –
an abstraction, a don’t, a receipt for a
royal gift
unopened. What more do you need in this
anachronic city of tracts proclaiming
salvation through harmonious and
royal regifting?
BYSTANDER
Diversity our strength through
civic shame, vigour on
stand by.
Toronto – bold and brackish
monolithic, lithographic witless
a platitude poem etched on the QEW
a blow torch to transport.
Stand by
for further failures, greater
hit and run – our
diversity our strength
in number games, or
faith in prime numbers, so proud to
stand by
and see real people scurry as one
unreal person peddles responsibility – no
diversity; our strength
a bystander.
SALTER STREET STRIKE
One with the strength of many
alone in the distant North End.
People before profit.
It’s a seemingly endless descent.
Marlyn’s streets do not resemble
one with the strength of many
morbid singularities
entirely unaware of
people before profit
motive or profit projection or
the very ones who long for
one with the strength of many
ways of both ways – Nichol’s heart
can be ours. H as a door to many
people before profit.
Listen, it’s a healthy nostalgia if it owns you
or at least not the worst thing ever if you are
one with the strength of many
people before profit.
DEDICATIONS
‘Summary: Cultural Hegemony’ is for kevin mcpherson eckhoff.
‘Summary: The History of Sexuality’ is for Susan Holbrook.
‘Blurbists’ is for Darren Bifford.
‘Hey, Carol Maker’ is for Christian Bök.
‘Moda’ is for Elizabeth Bachinsky.
‘Tenants’ is for David McGimpsey.
‘Salter Street Strike’ is for John K. Samson.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Evan Munday, Alana Wilcox, Susan Holbrook, Jeramy Dodds and everyone at Coach House Books. Thanks to David McGimpsey, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Maryanna Hardy, Tara Flanagan, Heather Stewart, Jacob Spector, Julie Mannell, Ian Orti, Darren Bifford, Mike Spry, Sina Queyras, Nicole Brossard, Tyler Morency, Jess Marcotte, Emma Healey, Genevieve Robichaud and my parents.
Special thanks to my writing teachers.
Very special thanks to Lilly Fiorentino.
NOTES
The text from ‘Winnipeg Cold Storage Company’ is appropriated and manipulated (with the most love) from Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative by Judith Butler.
Some of the text from Tautnotes is appropriated and anagrammed for satiric purposes (and with the most love) from the following texts, their titles and authors, in order of appearance:
De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
Mythologies by Roland Barthes
The Pleasures of Hating by William Hazlitt
Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative by Judith Butler
Seed Catalogue by Robert Kroetsch
The text from ‘Rubric for the Evaluations of Poetry, Dedicated to Ms. Castro’s Sixth Grade Poetry Students at Mater Academy Middle/High School in Hialeah Gardens, Florida’ is appropriated and rearranged from a rubric for the evaluation of poetry, prepared by Ms. Castro for students and teachers at Mater Academy Middle/High School in Hialeah Gardens, Florida.
‘The Report Cards of Leslie Mackie’ is a narrative sequence of visual poems that sets out to critique the culture of homophobia, transphobia and bullying in early childhood education.
‘Moda’ uses the slogans for Expo ’67 as its refrains. ‘Concordia’ uses the mottos for the city of Montreal and the town of Mont-Royal as its refrains. ‘Bystander’ uses the mottos for the city of Toronto and the town of Burlington as its refrains. ‘Salter Street Strike’ uses the mottos for the city of Winnipeg and the community of the North End as its refrains.
Earlier versions of some of these poems have been published in the following journals: EVENT, PRISM International, Hobo, Joyland, The Winnipeg Review, Lemon Hound, subTerrain, Contemporary Verse 2, The Toronto Quarterly and New American Writing.
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 five previous poetry collections, including The Theory of the Loser Class, which was shortlisted for the A. M. Klein Prize. His most recent poetry collection, Indexical Elegies, won the 2010 CBC Book Club ‘Bookie’ Award for Best Book of Poetry. He lives in Montreal, where he teaches writing at Concordia University and edits Matrix magazine.
This ePUB edition produced at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane.
The print edition is typeset in Albertan and printed in August 2013 at the old Coach House on bpNichol Lane in Toronto, Ontario, on Zephyr Antique Laid paper, which was manufactured, acid-free, in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, from second-growth forests. This book was printed with vegetable-based ink on a 1965 Heidelberg KORD offset litho press. Its pages were folded on a Baumfolder, gathered by hand, bound on a Sulby Auto-Minabinda and trimmed on a Polar single-knife cutter.
Edited by Susan Holbrook
Designed by Evan Munday
Author photograph by Lilly Fiorentino
Coach House Books
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Toronto, Ontario M5S 3J4
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