The man who works for the city is clearly a poet. Watch him as he skirts the jagged potholes on the road. For him they are a mimicry of moon. Craters to fill with trope and not with tar. Eye him as his hose sucks all the chaff up from the sewer—an elephant at the edge of a watering hole—cognizant of predation yet awise it needs to drink. How can a behemoth be affrighted by a mouse? Look again—the Norway rat placed gently on the lawn. If it’s unworthy of love, then how can we

Please—no more poetry prompts. They’re living with the larks in la-la land. None which light a bulb for what’s been lost. Write about your very first camping trip. Sure, I’ll scrawl about the tents in فلسطين. Ones with scourge & rats. Cute as a whisker’s twitch. Torn just like a kite that’s clawed by osprey. Mine got stuck in oaks like Charlie Brown’s. Epitomize your childhood— a single, joyous image will suffice. What names do the animals call themselves? Do

You’re averse to eating tuna. Calling it “Frankenfish.” There’s a dozen different ones in your stinky tin. Fins inauspiciously flaked past recognition. My StarKist has been opened with the teeth of an electric jaw—efficient as a table saw, a lid that hangs by a strand; as a cuspid that is loose in second grade, your rocking it back & forth like grandma’s chair— the one in which she knit— until it drops in your anxious palm. Your father lost four fingers to a Rockwell—its whee

I’ve tired of saying it twice. It dilutes the gong of love. My uncle stuffed his ears with cotton balls. Not to quiet the Earth but to bear in mind the labour of those enchained. He deemed it reparation. Organized 3-on-3 at Jane & Finch. Your ex had mumbled stay & it blew the game. Like Dylan with bazookas in his mouth. The gum— not the gun. A superfluous dubble bubble. Pops as soon as you gesture for attention. Like the stone you’ve skipped along the stagnant pond. The rest

I no longer hold the door for someone else. The last time I did it made the front page. By all means, assume I’m simply tactless; void of bygone manners; absent of chivalry— when a woman’s right behind me in the torrent—my faking obliviance; dreading she’ll think it’s a ploy to get her number. The last time I was polite, I stood like an English footman, allowed 4 others to pass. Seconds can domino— throughout eternity. Faces have a quintillion combinations. As for that unfo

and flags and scraps of blue above him make regatta of the day —P.K. Page The Glass Air: Poems Selected and New I’ve read Canada will be sending POET to other worlds. Though it’d be better to launch a poet—to a planet miming ours; such as TOI- 6716 b, discovered in ’26, dubbing it Alicia instead— as a troubadour will often do, the one who took a gavel to your heart, leaving just the muse to birth the verse; its woe, its wonder, strophes of I would have adored you more if only

The Holy Land is nowhere near Jerusalem. Dear Abrahamic faiths—I am truly sorry. Your shrouds once white now claret have stamped you null & void. I get the jar of sand you’ve cached is thought to be a blessing. That you’ve waded in the Jordan, vowed to never wash again. Like the very first brush you felt from a beloved crush. The ground on which they tread— roped off in your mind with a silver plaque. No, make that gold. There are seldom second bananas that are entombed in sa

Iceland is no longer mosquito-free. When it comes to global problems, this is hardly breaking news. Maybe that’s why I found it while perusing phys.org— though how it pertains to physics I do not know. What I do know is no one loves mosquitos but the frogs. And spiders. And maybe the odd lizard here & there. I can’t imagine Iceland having frogs—their croaks from some volcano keeping me up at night. But of course, arachnids must be everywhere— like the rat & kitchen roach.

Well, maybe just one more. But only if the rocks were once a boulder and the boulder a bit of mountain. Not Everest or Olympus Mons, but the smallest one on Earth—mistaken as a hill by both the yodeller and the mole. The only thing worse than being found naked? Caught in lederhosen. I don’t mean dead —but very much alive and trudging down the slope so scarlet-faced—for which you’ll no doubt blame the sun and SPF-point-five. When does a stone become too large to be a stone?

There’s a certain way to voice it that removes all trace of doubt: I love you denotes that you’ve been chosen; out of everyone who's birthed; that I know of seasoned ardour & its heave; two clans who tug in kilts below the boughs, your name in orange plaid— the hue of a lifting sun. Your lambency aloft beyond the rain. I love you is stuck in self- importance. A smug, Earth-centric cosmos. How honoured you should be of my devotion—as though each rose a laurel —from the gar

You’re lamenting like a kvetching Jeremiah: I no longer write you love poems; say your lilt has put to shame the morning swifts; I haven’t compared your glory to a nestling’s— in that moment it takes to the sky for the very first time. Very first is quite misleading. Its wings may have burst through fissures while you slept. Then took a trial flight beneath the fleet of stars. My telescope transfixed upon the same old barren basins of the moon— until an egg which up & flut

Paradox is pretentious— it’s simply either way you’re fucked. There is no other English word for petrichor. This is why a poet shouldn’t dwell in the Sahara. What’s the point of windows if nothing ever changes? There are only so many ways in which to scribble sand. The moment we said it’s time became its typecast. Think mirror and Bela Lugosi. Again we’re back to glass. They say a cat will never meow to another of its kind. That it’s merely for the benefit of us. Note the

There are only so many ways you can pen of innocence. Do it with a quill and you’re precluded. For who has conferred the right—to write with another’s soul? How do you know the gull won’t circle back, scan the grit of sand for what is theirs? And why assume a circle? There are twenty trillion shapes from which to choose. Every Magen David— trigons that wouldn’t stay put. Why do we bleed out and never in? Ink has the viscosity of life. I have never seen the blood of bird

If it weren’t for the iridium in the strata, the rulers of the roost would still be dinosaurs— the peak of the pecking order. Waking us on the farm instead of the drawl of Foghorn Leghorn. I’ve heard deGrasse & Dawkins say the chickens are dinosaurs. That Colonel Sanders knew it from the start. But none would buy a share in KFD. Everything tastes like poultry in the end. It’s just the batter we all want. We were never their heir apparent; and it’s apparent we’ll be dethron

I’d be a poet if it weren’t for other poets. Twelve of them orbiting the trunk of a walnut tree, bemoaning there’s no fruit; craning up their neck like some egret, then scribbling in “regret”— as if none have ever thought of that before. 6 of them will note they see it lean— ready to deem it Pisa. The other half- dozen focusing on the bark, incising in initials—from some latent, schoolyard love— or cleverly inserting something about a dachshund, how its bite is worse than it

“The biggest barrier is the yuck factor” —CBC News, March 29, 2026 I wouldn’t eat them either. I’m not John the fucking Baptist. No honey/ maple syrup could ever make a difference. Gravy can only do so much. How you hide says more than what is hidden. But this has nothing to do with brunch, or the messenger of the Lord. Or the mustard by which you’ll cloak your ballpark frank. You’re out at first before you’ve swung the bat. The unsighted cannot see what they are chewing

The most senseless faux pas life ever made was heaving itself to land. Its sands that bore our serpents. Fish are never thirsty. Fins have never felt a crucifixion. Or hangnails lasting weeks. The wrench of aging backs—while pulling up their socks. Each one with its holes like effervescence. We were all better off in the sea. No partition of the waters. Clods with a nuclear code. Everything was sushi. The octopus? A spider who changed her mind. Floating in the deep as if th

Never write a poem when you are hungry. Much like a grocery run—the bill is thrice the price when you are famished. Your potatoes a bag of boulders on your back. Never paint a landscape while you’re starving. The willows will be leafless—not because it’s winter but each green the look of sage, and you envision it as season for your trout— which will multiply profusely in your river— that pretzels through the canvas peacock blue. Every fowl’s fare with an empty gut. You will

I bet you Kratos couldn’t open this pickle jar. As if it had been fastened by cement. I lament the fact if I can’t get to the gherkins, what’s a little old lady supposed to do? The bag in the box of Apple Smacks refuses to be pried. The glue from a thousand steeds. Considering what it’s doing to my obliques, it's a GoodLife all its own. What’s a little old lady supposed to do? The can opener’s called in sick. Every single canine’s chipped or broke. It’s as useful as Gums M

They say the hand is quicker than the eye. Everything is, really. Two turtles playing catch-up with a squirrel—seeing its bounding appendage in ellipse. If rats had fluffy tails, we’d all be stuffing walls with provolone. I caught your beauty in a mirror—my sight was somewhat slower than my tongue. I said I would have loved you had my pupils honed in sooner—some phantom afternoon in Jacob Park. Years are much too long to house regret. It’s why the tortoise drags its feet. Th