new from above/ground press: No Right on Red, by Helen Hajnoczky

No Right on Red
Helen Hajnoczky
$4

We are waiting at a red light to turn right. We are glad we don’t live in a city where people our age have their own houses and careers and cars and kids. We are remembering the time we saw Leather Face at Fouf’s. We are remembering the time we threw up in Fouf’s. We are getting drunk at Blue Sunshine watching A Christmas Story and Black Christmas. We are buying Pall Mall 20 packs because we can't afford 25. We are lying in the grass at Jeanne-Mance. We are taking the 80 past the mountain and thinking we’ll definitely go up there this fall to see the red leaves, this winter to skate on the lake, this spring to see the first buds, this summer to wander in the green. We are never going up the mountain. We are going to work on three hours sleep. We are going to work hung-over. We are going to work still a little drunk, to be honest. We are going to Orange Julep because we still have the rental car. We are letting our heartbroken friends sleep on our couch. We are taping up the cracks in the floor to stop the neighbour's smoke from drifting into the apartment. We are half-heartedly fighting the mould growing in the corners of the bedroom, the office. We are looking for a better job.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2017
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Helen Hajnoczky is the author of Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising (Snare/Invisible Publishing 2010) and Magyarázni (Coach House Books 2016). Helen’s chapbook Bloom and Martyr won the Kalamalka Press’ 2015 John Lent Poetry Prose Award. The poem “Other Observations” has previously appeared in a chapbook of the same name (No Press 2010) and on the Dusie blog as “Tuesday Poem #109” (2015). Her poetry has also appeared in the anthologies Why Poetry Sucks (Insomniac Press 2014), Ground Rules (Chaudiere Books 2013) and The Calgary Renaissance (Chaudiere Books 2016), as well as in a variety of magazines and chapbooks.

This is her third chapbook with above/ground press, after A history of button collecting (2010) and The Double Bind Dictionary (2013).

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