Friday, June 27, 2014

"poem" broadside #328 : "jwcurry's Map Drawers," by Anita Dolman



Weight of papers presses
the warped floor, latticework of rotten
boards bend, threatening
to pop through the ceiling
of the driving school below
his greybird Chinatown walk-up,
metalweight of mapminder’s cabinets
piled heavy by years
of carefully registered ephemera

We’ll have to evacuate these words
to lower ground,
flee them to the suburbs
like so much paperwork
and furnishings before

From the carpeted guest room of our bungalow,
I hear other writers’ intentions
shift inside the dented columbarium;
there’s a party drifting sleeplessly in there
from drawer to drawer, whose guests and intimacies
I have accepted I will never comprehend entirely,
not the way I would want to,
no matter how often I sneak in to pull the handles
and watch them whisper their secrets
to each other.

jwcurry’s Map Drawers
by Anita Dolman
produced for the spring edition of the ottawa small press book fair, June 2014
above/ground press broadside #328
This is Dolman's fourth above/ground press publication, after the previous "poem" broadsides "Shoes" (#175; summer 2003) and "From the Triptychs series (ongoing)" (#201; 2004) and the chapbook Scalpel, tea and shot glass (2004).

Anita Dolman’s poetry and flash fiction have appeared in journals and magazines throughout Canada and the United States, including, most recently, in Grain, Bywords.ca, The Antigonish Review, ottawater and The Peter F. Yacht Club. Her poetry appeared in the 2006 Chaudiere Books anthology Decalogue: ten Ottawa poets. Her short story “Happy Enough” is available as an e-book (Morning Rain Publishing, Burlington, 2014). You can follow her on Twitter @ajdolman.

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