Ben Ladouceur
$6
Before
Mothers raised children like beets from the ground.
It was always quiet and appropriate to cry.
Cain groped his brother’s blood red bones
and said the first word ever, which was Oops. Stones spoke.
Crowds gathered. Sleep came easily. Men sold gold. A fisher
ate a lobster and went Oh my goodness, not bad. Goodness
being thought of as a thing you could hold
and call yours, how the wick holds the light and says Wick.
How that light holds the hot out in every direction
saying Light. It was really windy. People died younger.
A young king employed a swift look to encourage
his guy on the side to go back to sleep. The bright was just
a dawn, he said, like any dawn. The sigh the asleep
man released had an oxygen atom in common
with every breath that you have ever drawn.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2025
to mark the occasion of Ladouceur's appointment as Writer-in-Residence for the Winter 2026 semester, Department of English, University of Ottawa
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Ben Ladouceur has received the Thomas Morton for Fiction, the National Magazine Award (Gold) for Poetry, the Archibald Lampman Award, the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, the Earle Birney Prize, and a writer’s residency at the Al Purdy A-Frame. He is the author of the novel I Remember Lights (2025), the poetry collections Otter (2015) and Mad Long Emotion (2019), and nine previous chapbooks, including the above/ground press title Lime Kiln Quay Road (2011) which was nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. He lives in Ottawa.
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