new from above/ground press: ESPESANTES, by Stuart Ross

ESPESANTES
Stuart Ross
$5

*

Behind the Dazzler Hotel
in Asunsción

I poured milk into
an old running shoe,

added sixteen
bent staples.

And yet
no woodpecker alighted.

I’d been
bamboozled.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Author’s note
Each of these poems uses as its starting point words or phrases from the poems in Spanish of Sarah Moses’s chapbook As they say (Socios Fundadores, 2016).

Cover art by Kerry Zentner

Stuart Ross is the author of 20 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and countless chapbooks and ephemera. His most recent books include the novel-in-prose-poems Pockets (ECW Press, 2017) and the poetry collection A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (Wolsak and Wynn, 2016), which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry in 2017. Other titles include the poetry collection A Hamburger in a Gallery (DC Books, 2015), the novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011), and the story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009). Stuart began his literary career by selling his self-published chapbooks on the streets of Toronto during the 1980s, wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books.” He was the 2010 Writer in Residence at Queen’s University, and has taught writing workshops across Canada. His poetry has recently been translated into French and Slovenian; other translations, into Nynorsk and Spanish, are in progress. His micropress, Proper Tales, is lurching toward its 40th year of publishing. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

[Stuart Ross will be launching this title as part of THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY on August 25, 2018 at Ottawa's Vimy Brewing Company!]

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

“poem” broadside #341 : “The Sky in Balvanera” by Sarah Moses

From a rectangle cut out of the sky in Balvanera falls food instead of rain. On Tuesdays, it’s lemon rinds and orange peels. There can be so many, falling all day long, that the sky turns yellow and orange and the air smells like freshly squeezed juice. Afterward, the fruit covers the ground. It begins to rot, and a sickeningly sweet smell arises from the sticky pulp. On Fridays, egg shells and chicken bones and the left-over fat from some steaks drop down from above. The trees whip in the wind, the clouds block out the sun, and the animal remains cannot be seen against the dark sky. They are heard when they land on the ground: the shells crack into tiny pieces and the fat absorbs the falling bones. Eventually, the worms and slugs find homes in the parts of other animals. Lit cigarettes also fall from the sky, though this happens every day of the week. Their lights blink and then go out when they reach the earth. The paper slowly disintegrates but the filters never break apart; they take on the brown colour of the soil and pile up in small mounds that soon become big mounds.

The Sky in Balvanera

by Sarah Moses

January 2017

above/ground press broadside #341

Sarah Moses is a Canadian writer and translator who divides her time between Toronto and Buenos Aires. Her translations and interviews have appeared in Brick and Asymptote, and her poems in the chapbooks as they say (Socios Fundadores, Buenos Aires, 2016) and Those problems (Proper Tales Press, Cobourg, 2016).