An Open Erotics of Gzowski

Christakos, Margaret (1962 - 0)

Original Text

Margaret Christakos, Sooner (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2005): 103.

1The voice of the bodiless lover is a trope

2for the world's brooding power to scintillate our aliveness

3in physical space To animate us to our own

4skin's porous interest in exchanging matter with the matter

5both inside and beyond its seal The voice's perfume

6crosses the bleak dark valley we like to consider

7the separateness of the individual; it lets us be

8in the midst of an erotic thrall while we

9rinse our mugs and wipe our stained cupboards It

10assures us the body is not a married organ

11properly bound to one dock but a canoe, okay,

12careening on a fluid carpet of whimsy and longing

13virtually upended in a spray of language, seriously amorous

14about the sea world and all the voices its sheathlike

15structure would and can contain

Notes

1] Peter Gzowski (1934-2002), Canadian reporter, 15 years the host of Morningside, a CBC radio show of interviews in which Canada gradually came to understand who it was. Back to Line

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011

Rhyme

irregular

Form

couplets, sonnets plus a single

Special Copyright