Perfection

64 Pages·2012·5.688 MB·English

by  Warner, Patrick

Perfection
Also by Patrick Warner
Poetry
Mole
There, there
All Manner of Misunderstanding
Fiction
double talk
Perfection
PATRICK WARNER
icehouse poetry
an imprint of Goose Lane Editions
Copyright © 2012 by Patrick Warner.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the
Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright,
visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.
Edited by James Langer.
Cover image by Michael Valdez, www.istock.com.
Cover and page design by Julie Scriver.
ISBN 978-0-86492-768-2
Issued also in print format.
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada.
Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the generous support of the Canada Council for
the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), and the
Government of New Brunswick through the Department of Culture, Tourism, and
Healthy Living.
Goose Lane Editions
500 Beaverbrook Court, Suite 330
Fredericton, New Brunswick
CANADA E3B 5X4
www.gooselane.com
Contents
9 Waxing
11 Ablutions of a Middle-Aged Man
14 The Black Rats
15 Polyurethane
16 Elegy for a Single Measure
18 The Pound of Flesh Bazaar
20 Confirmation
21 Blackbirds
22 Anorexia
24 Four Shorts
25 The Chocolate Chip Pancake Is Innocent
27 Interstellar Honkytonk
28 The Animal’s Absolution
30 The Therapist
32 The Zone
33 The Ravine
35 The Owl
36 Cuba
38 Fish of my Flesh
39 A History of the Lombards
42 The Host
43 Funereal
46 The Chinny-Chin-Chin
47 Keeping an Even Keel
48 Elegy for my Family
50 Valentine’s Day
53 At the Gallery
54 Song of the Closed Road
55 Anchoress
59 Thanksgiving
for Annie
Waxing
It began when I hit the snooze and slept in late,
got worse when I perched on the edge of the bed
and in one fluid motion attempted to pull
my still fastened shirt down over my head.
It was that kind of morning, a broken button
I had once thought neat as a crescent moon
lodged with force on the bridge of my nose
and cut into my flesh, a sickle. Blood trickled,
dripped from my nose to my lip to my lap,
thereby waking a sleeper cell
in the form of a newly cut key which the guy
at the key shop hadn’t properly sanded.
In no time at all it turned into a breadknife,
quietly sawing a hole in my pocket,
unbeknownst to me until the moment I reached
for the gas pump and felt the spill
of coins down my leg. One lodged in my shoe,
while several more scattered out in the slush
where they seemed to refresh themselves,
turned silvery in the pavement’s salted wet.
Like sparrows around a heated bird bath
those coins seemed — if I can say such a thing —
to be enjoying themselves, seemed to be saying
that every cloud has a nickel-alloy lining.
8
They said ignore the fact that bad things
always happen in threes. Look up, they said,
and there above the park I saw a falcate moon,
and felt again the pull of mysterious forces,
the magnetic coming together of pieces
in a meaningless meaningful way — Professor,
let me explain: it’s where the rule of three
meets Murphy’s law, it’s the moment when
the number of things the average mind can recall
is exceeded by one, but the spirit drawing
on unstable power — not Strong-Cobb units of force,
but Olivia Newton Joules of laughter —
invents an on-the-spot order. And so it was
I took in the grin of that cracked-Aspirin moon
aligned above the bust of Winston Churchill,
an unusual bust sawn off at the nipples,
and placed on a chest-high plinth in the
eponymous park in such a way
that it looks as though he has stepped behind
that polished granite block to take a piss,
his bulldog scowl revealing not only his
bloody-mindedness but perhaps a waxing trouble
with his flow, much like that pump clocking
five cents at a time in the early morning ten below.
9