HALIBUT

It still makes me laugh when I said I was quoting Milton Acorn who’s a Canadian poet and your shot me the sharpest look I ever saw come out of you. What kind of blame fool do you think I am. I know who Acorn is. Only later did mom say you wrote poetry when you two met and that you’d burned it all, like you did with your old notebooks and records. What was it with you and destroying? Mom did it too. Your desk looks just the same except all the coil ring notebooks she tore out every piece of your handwriting. You approve don’t you? Well, I don’t but it’s too late to fix. Your old school books are safe. Mom will hardly let me look at them but she thinks they’re antiques and may be worth something some day. I say they’re worth something now.     neem wood     brush mirror beauty set     dust

It’s almost spring again. A gain, a gin. Aging, raging. I can still see you with solitaire, your pepsi and gin. A gun rack of rifles overhead until the law changed and made you hide them where they were to be locked up. At least I never knew where they went.  You kept the rack up, invisible guns, the rack as proof there were some near.     sun thru     the cat’s ears     cloud

You railed against things. “Useless, useless.”  You did your own burning while I was away. You announced you’d got rid of decades, all the paperwork I’d once hoped to see. I said nothing. what was there to say. Your opinion never asked for mine. When I say that in Times New Roman, it seems more final than it is. More confident than I am. When I say it in Cochin I just look unsure. Helvetica is just wrong. So I go for a another walk instead.     following the crow     our shadows inside     the forest’s

Beside your playing cards in the china cabinet triple depth of ornaments. A Niagara Falls snowball from her brother collects dust. He’s the one you once said you’d shoot if so much as his shadow crossed your land. He never visited again, travelled past at noon or night, to keep his shadow tail tucked under him. That ball might have meant something to her brother. She wanted it on spec while cleaning out of his possessions into the fire barrel’s rounded black lip. She recounted pulling apart tapes, breaking the magnetic strip without watching any of it, sure it was contemptible. Yet she needed a piece of him that was clean as snow, hermetically sealed. Maybe she fought for it against a sister who knew “it weren’t worth much”, but would be worth more to both of them if they argued for it. The spirit of auction excitement must have perked up the shoveling of books, music notes, letters into flames.     auction receipts     to get a th...

Do you hear me now? I’d change my angle to the phone receiver as if that would make the difference in your hearing. Your earlobes were American pancake fleshy. The right had a recurrent fester, a boil on the bottom right back that would swell yellow, a small thimble of pressure  until you’d ask me to get the needle and kleenexes and lance it. It burst like a puffball,  but these spores were a goo, scent of abscess, sense of relief.  But what our body injures, it needs. It regrows.     ground cherries –     making a new pile     for the soft ones Pearl Pirie

What I didn’t record of you will die with people who I will never meet. Perhaps a step-brother took one shot in a home movie where you spoke, probably mumbling, probably looking down and away from the camera. Maybe directly into the lens, laughing over what you said so it’s unintelligible.  I’ve never seen it.     sparrow bobs     a beeline is the line     a cat makes Pearl Pirie Read Got News, Part 1 and Part 2

The school clock you bought that you watched as a lad is still in your room. No one winds it, but no one got rid of it either. It isn’t your room anymore. It’s the guest room. Mom took my old room instead. She gave away your harrows, your tractor, most of the harnesses, wagon. Put them into use, someone. Probably James. And your guitar, your suits all your clothes. Not that you were figuring on wearing them again anyway and they’re too big for me.         what horses won’t use     porcupines will —     tooth-frayed collar Pearl Pirie Read Part 1 of Got News here 

Got news for you, dad. Your friend of yours who worked for the cemetery wasn’t burying till the end. Ken, yes Kenneth. He died not long after you did. Didn’t dig his own grave as he said he would, he just wandered off until his body was found. Mom, she found the drama exciting, search parties, helicopters. I guess you didn’t get the news from there. Mom was all happy-sounding as she only does when she’s really ratcheted up. Apparently there was an auction of his stuff. Not that anyone told me. Mom didn’t go. Bet you would have liked a keepsake. I would have got you something, had I known. Guess all the stuff from their apartment went in with that too. Would you have wanted Ken’s hatchet? Or some of the hookrugs that you thought were kinda nice. A fella can always use another blanket of what Margaret quilted. Water loves its bridges. heart attack an oak’s shadows sleep Pearl Pirie Read Part 2 of Got News here.