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From the archives

Object Lessons

Lisa Alward’s debut collection

The Other Side of “Irish Eyes”

Brian Mulroney abroad and at home

But Is It Trash?

Evaluating art in the age of conspicuous consumption

 

Cold comfort (How cold my toes-tiddely-pom…)

to read you when I’d rather have you —

to have you, god forbid, then leave you.

Lying here, alone (And nobody knows)

surprised by love — that little time, sweet

poised measure, one table-spoon of, say it,

nectar, taken by a humming-bird in sips —

for us, one gulp of sudden joy.

 

Reading you, alarmed at every turn you take

each time you pass along my nerve ends’

reckoned memory of things we’ve never done,

I want to shout, “Stop writing over all the moments,

undo this cursor, cursed time’s sharp quill —

oh, dance with me, stand still.” This hold

you hold me in should never end— it never will.

E. Alex Pierce lives in East Sable River, Nova Scotia, where she is developing a centre for writers and artists. For ten years she taught creative writing at Cape Breton University, and is currently series editor for the CBU Press publication The Essential Cape Breton Library. She holds a master of fine arts in creative writing from Warren Wilson College and has participated in the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre. Her first collection of poems, Vox Humana, will be published by Brick Books in the fall of 2011.

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