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Copyright © Sarah Pinder, 2012
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Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in publication
Pinder, Sarah, 1983-
Cutting room / Sarah Pinder.
Poems.
eISBN 978-1-77056-324-7
I. Title.
PS8631.151C88 2012 cC811′.6 C2012-904678-7
one street named after a saint or mountain, another after blood,
pealing bells, loose live gerunds strung across, pitched in hum,
every eye a question, a pan, an establishing shot.
the alternate ending: wreck this, move with speed, a leash,
obedient click and what follows, wagging, eager, full breath
after the foot lifts, the cloud of upper sound in flat wet midday
warmth. you want drag in chorus, field spent, the clench of taking
aim at exhausted scrap, blowing it all –
the name of a pocket, a hand-carved tattoo.
in a red state, spell out the lesson here, map out the power
and water, or the rising lawn to disappear in
some fresh atlas, the new record.
practice wearing details yourself,
ghosted, twinned to a lighthouse.
movement in the dark requires geometry or optimism, a hand
along plaster, counting pockmarks.
streaked trees from the truck bed
the leaky world wets through
even this frame and mat
in the reeds, some insistent paper hum
in dragonflies mating, their drunken
swoop and hover.
the place where the land stopped and the water
began to green itself,
we walked here to talk about death,
to take off our pants.
you could ask me to push you in,
demand to be surprised,
your fierce mouth overflowing (bursting/bursting open).
the fine skin of a fever, bleaching. there’s some paper, sit with it, a salt
pig, a fuse, fresh slang, hitches in the running. tell amber in an evening;
the plant, the factory we call to, trembles, a near-sweet burnt smell –
name it, four or five ways at least.
maybe the only way to think is what’s cut is closer
to being still,
a pearly stream of fuel across the asphalt,
a peal – your hand a weapon,
just touching a plant or a child
in this place, just following orders, listening
well – that’s where trouble waits.
welcome arrow, stippled like split bone,
the moon’s nothing to pray over, a noun in the ear of the watchers
a dog bolts through in arc and amble,
clots of people weigh worry
wet nose against the back of a hand, a cool comma,
all moons are comparisons, possible constants, unflinching
this begins, quiet, craning.
Echo Chamber
You can tuck your whole hand neatly inside the pocket
of your cheek. Some girls can, anyway.
Here’s one in a skinny kitchen in Ojai:
the slip of her fist as a minnow,
fine and quick past her incisors
to the wrist, shrugging,
no biggie, arm hooked to her face
like a tentacle or a hose.
There’s a box labelled TEETH in this kitchen.
She touches the lid like it could do something special.
I haven’t been here long – I don’t even know
if teeth are inside, really, it’s just a guess –
but I’ve never seen anything brave or
famous come from a tooth.
Even while the automated lawn starts
watering
