Alice Burdick
$5
You did it my way
after Christopher Pratt
Aesthetics are managed by direction -
put this here and it is much better.
A tunnel of disturbing balance.
Amused contribution -
a control that always asserts.
Truth and fiction work together.
Especially the fiction, because truth
is never believed. A lie
with a spark gets things done.
A memory flips over and here
we are, driving down the shore.
Hang a left into the tea cup.
A wheel turns, and we don’t
take each other seriously. Dirt
roads a buzz, nostalgic spare tire.
This work is about something,
maybe only the formality of rack
and ruin. I take away character,
the things that fall, stain, pigeon poop -
symmetry, that is what I make.
Rectangles continue, a road
curves and straightens, strangeness
descends into pristine correction.
This longing for order will clean
that which won’t be tidied. Is that
what you want? I want to understand,
to flatten, like these remains
of a seagull, a military symbol.
I’m not suicidal - bing bang, wharf.
Sleep, however, forever -
that is that, left, fine.
We’ll leave it there.
It doesn’t bother me.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Alice Burdick writes poetry, essays, and cookbooks in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. She is the author most recently of Ox Lost, Snow Deep (a feed dog book/Anvil Press), and of Deportment, 2018, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Book of Short Sentences, 2016, Mansfield Press, Holler, 2012, Mansfield Press, Flutter, 2008, Mansfield Press, and Simple Master, 2002, Pedlar Press. Her practice often includes collaboration, and recently her poetry has been used in Woodlight, a series of three films created by Hear Here and Erin Donovan. Her poems have appeared in Aubade: Poetry and Prose from Nova Scotian Writers (Boularderie Island Press, 2018), GUSH: Menstrual Manifestos for Our Time (Frontenac House, 2018), Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence, An Anthology of Surrealist Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2004), as well as other anthologies. She is the author of many chapbooks, folios, and broadsides since 1991. Her essays have appeared in Locations of Grief: an emotional geography (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020) and My Nova Scotia Home: Nova Scotia’s best writers riff on the place they call home (MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc., 2019). She has authored three cookbooks for local publisher Formac Publishing. From 1992-1995, Alice was assistant coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair, and has been a judge for various awards, including the bpNichol Chapbook Award. She is also a freelance editor, manuscript assessor, and workshop leader.
This is Alice Burdick’s third above/ground press chapbook after A Holiday for Molecules (2019) and PLEASURE BRISTLES (with Gary Barwin, 2018).
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
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