MONOMERS
(A small science)

for Miranda

 

A polymer is made of mers
strung together.

 

Mermaids travel in schools.
Their lesson is to squeeze the life out of drowning men
while trying to save them.

 

Like medicine and drinking,
traffic jams and heat waves,
swordfish and mercury,
the emerging emergencies in melting
consist of merchandise that is rarely compassionate
when it comes to icebergs in the Maritimes,
and microclimates
like the Mer Bleue Bog.

 

Mers are devout Hindus, having originally entered India
from the northwest,
but they are also a term for the sea
used in compounds.
Polymers, when being compounded, require a tool,
which looks like the top half of a calendar.

 

Mirages and timetables
are fishtails and stickmen
lifting their arms in very old math
that doesn’t curve.

 

With numbers, as with people,
pairs are usually more interesting,

 

but inequalities are mapped
not as words
but as resins.

 

Mercy, murmur, miraculous.

 

Lonely as condensation,
here is the church and here is the steeple.

 

first published in dANDelion 34.2 (2009): 88-89

 

 

 

 

LINEAR POLYMER

(Entry line-up, Maid of the Mist, Niagara Falls, ON, 4:10pm, Aug 26, 2008)

 

Last chance; take your pick. You were breathing heavily. Waterfall. Last night I did. I’ll get it for you. I’m just wondering how much they are going to be. You’re going to hate yourself for sure. They tighten up for a reason and tuck in. Smile. The top is definitely the top. Amy wants it high. We’re gonna get soaked on top. That’s the Titanic right there. One goes every fifteen minutes every day. That’s pretty good odds you can’t have a dog. Make sure you keep it in. I’ll put it on when I get on. It’s so true, I’m just waiting. I had my hood on backwards and it went right into my face. I had the chance to hear her last year in Philadelphia. She is really, really, I don’t know what. See how windy it is over there? Just stand right against the thing. I want to get a picture of you in your lovely blue slickers. Smile. Sunrise. Wait a minute, keep going. You ask the person, I’m wearing a dress. I’ll tie it when we get on the boat. Oh yeah, it’s good. Say waterfall. Everybody took so long and now it’s stuck in my head. Is that my head? I’ve been enjoying it, it’s been a good couple of days. Yesterday was all business, but today I wanna get wet. Do I snore? You don’t understand, I’m blue. I don’t feel my age. I don’t think I want to get in quite yet. The water’s pretty blue; I like it. She has always been afraid of water in the face. Sometimes she just loses it and it’s not right. I did that already. It looks like your shirt has shifted and here is the line like this.

 

 

 

 

LINEAER POLYMER

(Doctor’s office waiting room, St. Catharines, ON, 10:35 am, Aug 28, 2008)

 

 

 

LINEAR POLYMER

(Entry line-up, Ripley’s Moving Theatre, Niagara Falls, ON, 3:29pm, Aug 26, 2008)

 

 

Are you going to the Dracula or the Frankenstein? This one’s six bucks. Let’s just go eat, it’s hot. Do you know how many seats there are? There’s a coupon too? There’s, like, so many coupons. Vous autres, vous arrivez juste du McDo? You changed mine. He did say it was 180°, right? It should be coming soon. Excuse me. Excuse me. If you are with a group keep all your tickets together. How’s it going? Bored. Best seats possible. There’s two there and he’s got the other three. You can just go straight ahead, actually. Isabelle? For me. For me. You don’t need. They’re not free. She tell me here. She give me, mais non! She give me that. The girl over there, comme ça, and said to me all right for both. And you’ll all be together. I’m gonna buy another ticket. Il faut chequer la grandeur des enfants—les Ontariens, tabernac! Moi, j’ai un réçu. J’ai payé. Sylvain, t’as payé avec ta carte? C’est fini? Mais non! Just push to the end. How’s it going? C’est quoi l’problème là? Ils montrent un film. After this we should do something together. Oh, you’re not plugged in? You have to hold onto the handles. The bubbles came out in the snowmobile. Today they’re not joking. The flash is on. Daddy, what time is it?

 

 

 

 

EPITHALAMIUM

(the science of large molecules)

 

Your hand in the helix,
ear in the search party,
blush in the headstrong of the bridge.

 

Modal in the choral,
angle in the antonym,
lily in the flag of the kings of France.

 

Rainwater in the ruminant,
toadstool in the mushroom,
salt in the mammal having dreams.

 

Shepherd in the calendar,
protein in the protean,
digital in the analogues of curves.

 

Spanish in the shoulder blades,
cardinal in the points,
correspondence in the needles and the cones.

 

Envelope in invention
mineral in the blessing
your substance in the substance of my sense.

 

first published in Rampike 18.1 (2009): 78

 

 

 

END OF THE YEAR OR SOONER

 

make a roof for the people, and the people walk
down the street with resin for a roof, and the roof
has magnesium in it, and sulphur, and the people
walk down the street with resin in their hair, and
resins are always falling from the sky to the ground,
and the birds make a people in the sky, a people
of the resin, and the resin is composed of sky, and
it composes the sky, and the people walking down
the street are the strings of resins, and covering
their hair with their arms, with newspapers, with
umbrellas, the people are the birds of resins throwing
their landings in the air like people for whom landings
are uncommon, like people committed to the ex-
pulsion of landings, the resins coming down upon
them like people driven out of countries discovered
by resins or that have discovered resins in veins,
in the countertops of suburbs, and people walk
down the street with resins for hair, with countries
committed to colour, with the bonds between them
the birds circling, and people walking down the street
with hunched shoulders so as not to look up and
call the resins by name, call the resins in the name
of the birds, the people, circling and loosening.

 

first published in Rampike 18.1 (2009): 77