Conversation kept in the air of closed windows
poet in a world of unending validity
fingerlifted furls over his panned ear
from sideburned cheek to head, hair directs satellite
looks
like a saviour with a face I’ve never seen
reflection of a parking ticket
in the windshield of all that he does
one hand on the wheel
he speaks through beard and nosehair
with a voice that distorts tape.
A/C in the B-series
black, more dust between seat than tire
donuts on onionfield
strike a match for my first cigarette
slouched on an exhale, strangled
ears folded over, black
roadrails nosedive into banks of gravel
shattered mosaic
muscles masquerade to the edges of the face
skidmarks scatter
dry scalp
Mazda B-series underwater tiresculpt terrain
bulbous trucks from plants, morning traffic from Barrie
unfiltered blood
oil leaks around the engine pistons
dead body flexing metal tendons
Terracina plaster implodes, sink in bed
finger dipping into the car radio
he’s got AM to separate cells in the head.
Mechanics replace their organs with mechanical arms
workers through corridor slap clay
and spin wet saw into fired mantel
made for mayors and money and haemoglobin
record in constructions limb on limb
held on fingerpressed minitape
a headache jumpercabled to a clot of pink
with his profile head-on to the mantel’s corners
led by the hand before the law became theft
plot the field of arrows
palm on supple clay
stood in dusted cargos through studio corridor
this limestone masculinity
upon these days
sculpted remains as that of ancients
saltwatered black marble figures of dredge
mantel stood in decorated homes with the poise
of an uncracked form halves perfection
like arteries split the heart
darted paintings scarred with the faeces of metamorphoses
as if the spinning world were the images of your memory
carrion to remember him
regurgitated from my brain
meat matter
baby bird food coagulated
as it rushes to fill its breast with lottery
from his blood belly
umbilical rope
fell mess on the street
like the dust cold on his truck
brought to this snowless town
and melted at the feet
celebratory flowers kept past their death
inundate the room
with smoke and fragrant decomposition
the break of a black-barked plant
and like toothpick or buckwheat
he picked from his teeth arrows
of alarming disarming
or call the bow-shot tipped
for in the air were militant eros
speckled mist of popped gunpowder spit
bubbles and tarot
starving, the farmer stole a rose,
the angels who
tell us
we will choke on our words
left this world in surgical obliteration
and from this dust
spawned with blood a son
with legs too long just to walk
and in this dust
refuge takes hostage.
Evan D’Alleva is a student in their second year at OCADU’s Creative Writing program. They are a poet whose poetry is often in the form of collaged lyrical vignettes; lamentations, memories, and desires.