new from above/ground press: Other Brief Discourses, by Abby Paige

Other Brief Discourses

Abby Paige
$4

I. Embarking

Should my point of departure be the dust

to which I will return? Or the water of which

I am composed? Or

I’m told the poet asked, are birds free

from the chains of the skyway?

So I depart from air.

One accustomed to the sea takes not long

to trust air’s buoyancy.

So let breath be

the place we start from. Let the sun

rise in our wake and our ship shudder

as we descend through cloud.

The river below, a forked black tongue

darting through the snow, I named

for the patron of cooks, put to death on a grill.

The maps I drew four centuries ago

I compare with land from the vantage of birds

and am not dissatisfied.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Abby Paige is a poet, performer, and freelance writer whose work has appeared in the United States and Canada, most recently in ottawater #9. Her solo show, Piecework: When We Were French, has toured in New England and Quebec. She received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a former Fulbright scholar.

[Abby Paige launches Other Brief Discourses in Ottawa at TheFactory Reading Series on February 22 alongside Brecken Hancock, Hugh Thomas and Michael Blouin]

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com