above/ground press: Valerie Coulton

still life with elegy
Valerie Coulton
$5

always writing

interrupting her notation of the present
wire bound
she places a plant on the nightstand
she cuts a recipe out of a magazine
there were poems about her &
she was satisfied with them
she was delighted
something in this language is deficient
chocolate wrappings
homemade soup
we complain about almost everything
we drink a cold beer

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Valerie Coulton’s books include small bed & field guide (above/ground press), open book (Apogee Press), and The Cellar Dreamer (Apogee Press). With husband Edward Smallfield, she’s the co-author of lirio and anonymous, both from Dancing Girl Press. She lives in Barcelona and co-edits parentheses, an annual journal of international writing.

This is Coulton’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after small bed & field guide (2017).

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

small bed & field guide
Valerie Coulton
$5

Which up?

Would not have bought this

but other weather.

What streets choose is no one

else’s. Confidently roaming mostly

cotton against surprising

pink ants. Sleep is preventable.

You have only to try. Feet will love you

unbecomingly, as have proven.

*

Summer’s lease negotiable

Concrete squares

interlaced with grass

and dirt where grass doesn’t

or mud as now why birds

silent in the rain

but maybe hunting

which is really fasting

we can speak

afterwards anyway

hidden as we are in

these middle-aged leaves

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2017
[as the final above/ground press publication of the press' 24th year]
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Valerie Coulton is the author of Open Book, The Cellar Dreamer, and passing world pictures, all from Apogee Press. She lives in Barcelona with the poet Edward Smallfield, co-author of lirio and anonymous, both from Dancing Girl Press.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to New American Writing, Dusie, and As If It Fell from the Sun (EtherDome), in which these projects first appeared.

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