new from above/ground press: OVERHEARD WHILE HIDING FROM THE SUN, by Kate Schapira

OVERHEARD WHILE HIDING FROM THE SUN
Kate Schapira
$4

#21: Subject: I Am a Thief


“You have a plot here?” To sprout
is to push. Materials come to
light sooner or later. “No,
I just like to walk through it,”
keeping herself in straws. Two
red and green apples form tiny
balls for a lamppost phallus; in elementary
school you learn about the Pilgrims,
the gold rush … Old documents look
like what you do with them to “age” them.
Leafing with gravitas, you say, “Mm.”


When is “house” apt? When it’s time
to pay your window tax, wearing
a chandelier drop for a pendant at
the end of the lax year. More
mattresses than anyone. More windows.


“I am a thief and would make
sure I deal with you financially.”
For love or money, taking Humanitarian
Architecture classes: “Guess who’s in it?
The boy who broke my heart,”
the heart a dolled-up woman who
can’t walk fast; how often does it compound?
The dump truck’s asphalt attachment



leaves a hot trail, a band of flaws.
Soak them in tea. Bake them in the oven.
The storyteller, she of the terrible
beauty and spandex patterns, says, “Mm.”

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Kate Schapira is the author of four full-length books of poetry, most recently The Soft Place (Horse Less Press), and eight other chapbooks, most recently The Ground / The Pass / The Wave (Grey Book Press). She lives in Providence, RI, USA, where she co-organizes the Publicly Complex Reading Series.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com