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From the archives

Carbon Copy

In equal balance justly weighed

Dangerous Grounds

Coming soon to a democracy near you

Tax and the Canadian Psyche

Elsbeth Heaman in conversation with Shirley Tillotson

Sonnet beginning & ending with a line from Merwin

 

I think always of you waiting

Though why this should be I don’t know

The strange vague esteem of the living

Imagining the dead have nothing more to do

 

Than hunger after their time on earth —

The kisses, the rifts, those indifferences, those whims —

All the range that once was feeling’s surfeit

That, memoried in the light of death, seems

 

Holier, more desired — yes, that romantic dreck

While I know it’s only fantasy & hope

Still brings me closer to you — such fake

Scenarios, silly dreams really there to help me cope

 

With a lifetime of words that no longer can be said

Now these words of the living, talking to the dead.

 

Catherine Owen is the author of nine collections of poetry, the most recent being Trobairitz (Anvil Press, 2012) and the chapbook Steve Kulash & Other Autopsies (Angel House Press, 2012). Her collection of memoirs and essays, Catalysts: Confrontations with the Muse, was published by Wolsak and Wynn in 2012. Frenzy won the Alberta Book Prize. Owen edits, tutors, plays bass in Medea & the allgirl AC/DC tribute band Who Maid Who, and composes with the Lyrical Outlaws.

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