new from above/ground press: Good People, poems by Gwendolyn Guth

How Armando Became a Ladies Man

He says, “I tell you story.”

Shrugs off grammar-clotted papers to make space

for memory and his hands’ motion. When he saw her

for the first time, he was wrist-high in blood, gore.

The animal death of the shop

enticed her: meat for sale. He knew

how to move his knife. Her eyes flashed jet-dark,

defiant. In a few days, the shining counter dissolved

like an apprentice dream. He wiped

his hands, turned from carcasses to caress

warm perfumed hocks, pink moons.

His young self fascinates him. Two years

living off the avails of a breathtaking hooker.

Imagine him then, pale ovo, thin asperagus,

dressing his body in expensive suits, his hair

in a pouffe. Afternoons sipping port,

his whore-lover having slept off

the night’s work. What kind of man, what kind

of life, pleaded his mother. Two years

of lacrimosa, invocations to the Madonna.

Two heavy years. Hands move swiftly

over his face to check an expression.

He says, “I had to think future.”  

Good People, poems by Gwendolyn Guth
$4

published in an edition of 200 copies, and launched as part of the above/ground press 17th anniversary reading/party, September 3, at the Carleton Tavern;

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, $2 US) to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Gwendolyn Guth, mother of three active boys, notes that super mom and super model have far less in common than their assonance would suggest. She has the enviable privilege of talking about literature for a living, at Heritage College in Gatineau. She is a long-time supporter of and participant in Ottawa literary ventures, including Bywords, above/ground, Ottawater, yawp, Friday Circle, Rideau Review, etc. Her chapbook, Good People, anticipates her first trade book, due any year now and fiercely successful in her dreams. She craves inner peace but settles for outer calm.