Girl Watching

Girl Watching

Original Text
Susan Holbrook, Joy is so Exhausting (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2009): 52.
1Wow, lookit her, there's a sunlit hay bale, there's a key lime pie and a million pixels.
2No way, she's a mealy peach, a fourth-place finish, an overlong film clip of Stockwell Day's wetsuit.
3Get out of here, she's a fresh bingo dabber, a claw-foot tub, cinnamon unwaxed floss.
4Sticky kitchen floor, infected piercing, leaf blower, another Hollywood lesbian breakup.
5Well how about that licorice allsort, that upbeat horoscope, roasted pine nut, team momentum, handcrafted inkwell.
6Please, rental-car insurance, kitty litter dust, oldies station, warm cauliflower water, tired hams stuck to a hot vinyl car seat.
7A puppy hero, a sturdy nest, nicotine patch, Fisherman's Friend, a Mt. St. Helen's floaty pen.
8Lower back strain, drum machine, insufficient RAM.
9She could be my waterspout, my pink paperclip, my Hallucinogenic Toreador.
10Ugh, late bus, wet firewood, oaf cat you can't give back, favour without the 'u.'
11There goes a winning ticket, slickly spinning bobbin winder.
12Hockey parents, Awake pamphlets, fibreglass splinters, laundromat TV.
13Sweet au lait, tin chimera, you're hard to pleat.
14Yes, for no one is as pre-emptive as you, as spacious and choppy.
15Well, I'll be a silk-lined swimmer, give me a kiosk, handy rhododendron.

Notes

2] Stockwell Day (1950-): Canadian leader of the Canadian Alliance party who, after winning a by-election in 2000 in Okanagan-Coquihalla in British Columbia, arrived for his first news conference by riding across Okanagan Lake on a Jet Ski, wearing a wetsuit. Back to Line
3] dabber: coloured marker pen. Back to Line
5] licorice allsort: a mixture of differently flavoured candies. Back to Line
6] oldies station: radio station playing pop songs of the '50s, '60s, and early '70s.
hams: that "part of the leg at the back of the knee; the hollow or bend of the knee" (OED). Back to Line
7] Fisherman's Friend: strong menthol lozenges, made in England originally for the breathing ailments of deep-sea fishermen. floaty pen: colorful tilt pens that have floating objects in a see-through barrel. Back to Line
8] drum machine: electronic device that produces musical sounds of percussion instruments. Back to Line
9] Hallucinogenic Toreador: .Salvador Dali's oil painting on a bull-fighting theme (1968-70) in which repeated images of the Venus de Milo are much easier to see than the toreador himself. Back to Line
10] oaf cat: pop graphic of a disagreeable cat appearing on shirts and cards. Back to Line
12] Awake pamphlets: evangelical information pamphlets of Jehovah's Witnesses, designed to warn non-adherents of an impinging end to the world. Back to Line
13] tin chimera: trading card in a game of magic, the Tin-Wing Chimera, which gifts a Chimera (dragon) card with the ability to fly. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
unrhyming
Form
varying
Special Copyright

Copyright © Susan Holbrook and used by permission of the poet. Authorization to republish this poem must be obtained from her in writing.