"poem" broadside #315 / Queen’s University writer-in-residence (2012) poem-pick # 4: from Algonquin, by Ashley-Elizabeth Best

I


Hustled waves clasp down,
a coerced grip.

Your head bobs with the hurtled
waves, the broken dark, yawning wound
of the day called back.

My hands break their cases,
cracked on the first day, gift
of the muscling wind.

The sky chortles, flings its wrecked
hold upon our heads.
I murder the minutes, all the
waiting, the patience to suffer
night's opening.


II


I want to feel taken,
I want the flash dazzle
licks of your flame,
but I am often ugly and untender
and the river of our life is overflowing.

All I know is distance,
the delicate frame of these
moments alone, with you,
fastened to the sand
waiting for the grinding
rapids.

from Algonquin
by Ashley-Elizabeth Best
above/ground press broadside #315
& Queen’s University writer-in-residence
(2012) poem-pick # 4
(curated by Phil Hall)

Ashley-Elizabeth Best recently placed first in the 2012 Great Canadian Literary Hunt in THIS magazine. She was on the poetry shortlist for the 2011 Matrix Litpop Awards and Prism's Poetry Prize 2012. She has work appearing in CV2 and a chapbook published with Cactus Press called Slow States of Collapse. Currently she lives and writes in Kingston.